


As Chaff Before the Wind

by beckettemory



Series: Leporidae lagomorpha [3]
Category: Leverage, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: (chapter four is much more tame), (kidnapping and child sexual abuse references), Accidentally Drifting Without a PONS System, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Autistic meltdowns, Canon-Typical Violence, Career Change, Drift Compatibility, Eliot Parker and Hardison are all autistic, Gen, Jewish Character, Kaiju Attacks, Parker is Jewish, Past Abuse, Platonic Relationships, See beginning of chapter notes for warnings, Sensory Overload, The Crew Starts To Actually Help People, Thievery, autistic characters, be very very careful reading chapter three and heed the warnings at the beginning of the chapter, changes of heart, chapter three contains potentially very triggering material
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-23 17:52:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9669620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beckettemory/pseuds/beckettemory
Summary: They never really expected to be thieves forever. They hoped, of course, that there would always be work for them. But when the world governments started combating the giant aliens with giant robots, their opportunities for looting dwindled.It's not like Eliot and Parker werelookingfor new jobs. They just kind of... stumbled upon a new calling. In the process, old enemies became close allies.And other old enemies got punched in the face. Because honestly they were asking for it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings in this chapter for: references to violence, mention of knives and bullets, mention of injury, mention of alcohol and alcoholism, mention of questionable grifting practices, mention of large death tolls (due to kaiju attacks), mention of (fictional) corpses, mention of death of parental figures

“Anything?”

Parker hummed vaguely.

“That don't help me,” Eliot said, shifting her weight just slightly on his shoulders.

“Maybe. Can't quite see,” Parker finally answered. “I need to get up there.”

She clambered down off Eliot’s shoulders, pulling his hair a little as she dropped to the rubble on the ground, and he hissed irritably. She went around in front of him, adjusting her gloves and looking up at the hole in the second floor wall, searching for handholds and obstacles just inside. Satisfied, she gestured to Eliot, who stepped forward and got ready.

Parker squared her shoulders and kicked a bit of rubble at her feet so she was standing more or less on flat ground. Eliot put his hands on her waist, double-checking his stance, too. Parker held on to his wrists and took a deep breath.

“Leporidae,” she said.

“Lagomorpha,” Eliot responded.

“One-two,” Parker said, bending her knees on two and jumping on the unspoken three.

Eliot used his grip on her waist to throw her into the air, letting go of her waist and catching her feet when she was high enough so she was standing upright in his hands. She engaged her core, locked her knees, and wobbled just a little as Eliot shifted on his feet to balance for both of them, lowering her so her feet were in his palms just above his shoulders. He heard her let out a breath slowly and he grinned. She always worried he would drop her doing a one-man, but he never had in the two years they’d been working together scavenging from kaiju-destroyed cities.

“Anything?” Eliot asked again, his voice coming out a little strained. She wasn’t heavy, but she was rigid as a board and it took most of his concentration to keep her upright.

Parker hummed. “Yeah,” she said vaguely, reaching out in front of her towards the hole in the wall. Eliot took four careful steps forward until she could reach the wall and grab on. “I need about eight more inches,” she said, and he nodded.

“One-two,” Eliot said, and on the unspoken three he lifted her half an arm’s length.

“Right first,” she called down, and he carefully brought her feet together and loosened his grip on her right. His arms shook a little with the strain of being at neither neutral position of his hands at his shoulders or his elbows fully extended, and it took him a short moment to regain control enough to shift her weight on her left foot to his center. She used the wall to steady herself, though, and lifted her foot out of his hand.

Before he could fully adjust to all of her weight being in one hand, she pulled the other foot free and swung her body through the hole in the wall, nearly making him lose his balance.

He dropped his arms gratefully, suddenly exhausted, and tried to peer up into the second floor room Parker had disappeared into.

The house they were looting was a mansion in Vancouver, their fifth city since the world ended. Each kaiju had fallen quicker than the last, meaning the damage was smaller each time. Bad news for Eliot and Parker. Less destruction meant less disruption to the city and less chance to loot.

They were mostly still looting so they had something to do, in all fairness. Money wasn’t much of an object, at least to Eliot. Parker loved money more than most things, and she had a lot of it; they were very good at their jobs. Their partnership with Sophie Devereaux and her crew had turned out to be the best idea they’d ever had; she had incredible connections and could sell anything. Alec Hardison, the boy wonder, had set up offshore bank accounts for both of them, and at last count they were well on their way to being millionaires before they were even twenty.

Each kaiju attack had brought more and more scavengers out to play, and many went from city to city with them. Several of the others were employed by Sophie, and Parker and Eliot were friendly, if reserved, with them, but many were freelance or worked for one of the other handful of distribution networks in play, and Eliot had been in more than his fair share of scrapes defending their turf. Suffice to say that his arms bore scars and bruises not only from splintered wood and twisted metal, both hazards of working among destroyed buildings, but also from knuckles, knives, fingernails, and on one notable occasion, a bullet.

The kaiju were doing less damage than before, but there was now a new source of damage: giant robots. Something called the Pan Pacific Defense League or something like that had decided to build a fuckin’ giant robot to combat the kaiju, and it had been launched two weeks ago when the fifth kaiju attacked Vancouver.

They were naming the monsters as soon as they surfaced now, and Eliot felt the names left something to be desired. I mean really, Karloff? And the new name for the very first one, the one that attacked San Francisco? “Trespasser”? Come on. “Axe-head” was a much cooler name.

The robot--a _jaeger_ , they were calling it, named Brawler Yukon--was an ugly thing, with a huge head that supposedly held two pilots controlling the whole thing. It did the trick, felling Karloff clumsily, but quicker than most prior efforts.

Eliot and Parker had been in Sydney, looting from the last attack and running out of options, when they got the news about Vancouver. They were on the first flight out. They were Sophie's best scavengers, and always the first to be sent to a new city.

Since leaving San Francisco, they'd been caught exactly one time, in Cabo. They'd been careless and cocky, working too close to an outpost and neglecting to clear the area before taking a rest. They'd been awoken by Ford, the Navy admiral who had unwittingly driven them _into_ San Francisco the first time. A bunch of countries were evidently doing the same thing with some military personnel that Sophie was doing with her looters; a dedicated team followed the kaiju and, after taking them down (or assisting, like with the jaeger), overseeing the scientists studying the kaiju and basically running security and all government functions wherever the kaiju struck. According to Hardison, Admiral Ford and Captain Sterling, along with a handful of other major US Navy, Army, Air Force, and Marine officers, and a handful from other countries’ militaries, had moved to each city hit by a kaiju within hours of them surfacing.

Ford had looked rough, his hair a mess and his breath smelling of whiskey in the middle of the afternoon. His eyes, dark and with heavy bags underneath them, had watched Eliot and Parker as they waited for Sophie to bail them out (she had sent an entire _team_ of lawyers) and his face had barely changed its expression as he watched them saunter out of the office, Parker throwing a little mischievous wave over her shoulder.

Poor guy.

Eliot started and barely caught the book that came flying out of the second floor.

“Hey!” he called up at Parker. “A little warning!”

“Book!” she yelled, and a moment later a second book flew out at him.

He caught it and squinted up at the hole in the wall, waiting for anything else, but Parker instead appeared in the makeshift window. Eliot turned over the books in his hands, confident that Parker wouldn’t chuck anything else at him if he was obviously not looking towards her. The books were leather bound and very old.

“What’re these?” he asked.

“Open the red one,” Parker said.

He opened the cover and saw _“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,”_ and his mouth dropped open.

“First edition, I think,” Parker said.

“These sell for thousands of dollars,” Eliot breathed. He opened the other book, the green one. _“Nineteen Eighty Four,”_ the title page read. Eliot hummed. “This is a good book. You read it?” he asked.

“Nope,” Parker said, disappearing from the window. “Bet we could get a good price for it,” she called down.

“I’m gonna look in the next room,” Eliot called. “Holler when you want down.”

Parker didn’t respond, but that didn’t worry him. She wasn’t much for talking while she worked, and neither was he. Eliot stashed the books with the rest of their catch that day, carefully hidden in a corner of the kitchen just in case they were caught. His hands free, he went on through the dining room and into what looked like a wine cellar. He put in his earbud and turned it on.

“Hardison,” he said. “Eliot.”

_“Yo.”_

“Sophie around?”

 _“Not here, but I can give her a call. She’s in the office today,”_ Hardison said. He was still based in San Francisco, living with Nana in her makeshift orphanage. The orphanage was actually two houses and had three times as many kids now, and a couple of the older kids helped out. Hardison received shipments of electronics from Sophie’s network and refurbished them in between acting as Sophie’s long-distance secretary and tech support. Eliot wasn’t entirely sure the kid slept.

“Yeah, thanks. We’re getting some good stuff here, probably enough for a shipment after today.”

_“Take that up with her, I just make the schedules. Shush a minute, I’m gonna call.”_

Eliot waited impatiently, his eyes scanning the rows of bottles. The other end of the comms stayed quiet for a long minute, and then crackled back to life.

 _“Eliot,”_ Sophie said. _“Do you have a problem?”_

Eliot let out a breath, suddenly thinking this was a stupid idea.

“Not a problem, no,” he said. “I’m--I’m in a bigass wine cellar and I don’t know what’s valuable.”

Sophie hummed. _“It can be hard to tell. Well… First, look for any bottles that have a cork covered in wax. Especially red wax. That’s a good place to start.”_

Eliot had seen a couple a minute earlier, and he quickly found them again. “Couple of those. ‘Sine Qua Non the Writing on the Wall’,” he read off one of them.

 _“Ooh, good find. Take that one,”_ Sophie instructed.

“And ‘Sine Qua Non Queen of Spades’,” Eliot read from the other.

 _“That one, too.”_ She paused and hummed in thought. _“Look near where you found those. Most collectors I know keep their very expensive wines near each other. Read out a handful.”_

So Eliot did, and Sophie denied several, growing ever more disheartened.

“2005 Chateau d’... d’Eck… somethin’,” Eliot read, stumbling over the word. “It’s huge.”

Sophie was quiet for a long second. _“Chateau d’Yquem? Fifteen liters?”_

Eliot turned the bottle as best as he could. It weighed probably fifty pounds. “Guess so. ‘Bout the size of a small child?”

 _“That bottle of wine sells for over twenty thousand dollars,”_ Sophie said, reverence showing in her voice even through the comms.

Eliot nearly dropped the wine. He carefully set it on the ground and took a big step away.

“I think we need to unload a shipment after today,” he said.

_“Yes, I should think so.”_

 

* * *

 

The kaiju didn’t do enough damage to keep the cities empty for long now. Vancouver hadn’t even been formally evacuated; there wasn’t enough forewarning to do anything but scramble into the few underground kaiju bunkers lots of cities on the Pacific coast were building. So the number of truly abandoned buildings… was next to none.

Eliot and Parker, at the expense of just a little more of their earnings, were now put up in hotels and motels during their tenures in kaiju-ravaged cities. Sophie tended to swoop in as soon as she could and find the closest intact hotel to the bulk of the destruction as she could and put pressure on the owner to reopen as soon as possible. Eliot suspected she used her connections with governments to prioritize each hotel she set her sights on when water, gas, and power were getting set back up in the city. In exchange for getting the hotel back on its feet, Sophie talked the owners into opening a few rooms for her colleagues just hours after an attack.

Eliot and Parker were constantly in awe of Sophie. She could talk her way into or out of any situation, and it was chilling to watch. She could assume identities at the drop of a hat. Her grip of accents was a little lacking, but she spoke at least five languages like a native speaker--and that’s just how many they’d personally witnessed her speaking. And through all this, all of her freaky mind-bending and manipulating whoever she wanted, she remained perfectly kind and motherly to them, and she’d never (to their knowledge) tried to trick them.

To be honest, it almost made Eliot uneasy.

In Vancouver, the closest hotel to the bulk of the destruction was a small, family-owned motel. It was rundown, but not because of the kaiju. It had free breakfast, though, and in less than a week after Karloff fell it had electricity, running water, working kitchenettes, and cable, so it beat all of Eliot and Parker’s previous residences by a mile. Each room in the motel was now occupied by at least two people in Sophie’s employ, between looters, appraisers, mechanics, and management.

Eliot and Parker had been in the city for three weeks, alternating raids of residential areas during the day while residents were at work and school with raids of businesses at night while everyone was at home. The population of the area had dropped dramatically in the attack, both because of the death toll and because residents in the area had left in large numbers, staying outside or in other parts of the city while their homes and businesses were rebuilt, but there were some people stubbornly clinging onto their ruined homes and belongings, and they didn’t take kindly to looters. They’d managed to stay out of sight after the first day, when an elderly Chinese woman sweeping gravel off her porch saw them breaking into her neighbor’s house and chased after them as fast as she could (which was admittedly not very fast), shaking her broom at them and yelling angrily in Mandarin.

At the moment they were relaxing in their room, killing time before their late night raid on a business across the highway from the motel. They’d been prepping all afternoon, repacking their bags, testing their comms, replacing belts and lengths of rope in their harnesses just in case they needed to belay out of there. Then, there was nothing else to do except wait and eventually change into their all-black gear and lace up their boots.

Parker scoffed at the television screen. The tv detective was bent over a corpse while the medical examiner pointed out a faint tattoo over the corpse’s sternum.

“That doesn’t say ‘peace’,” Parker said. “It says ‘unity’. Who wrote this episode?”

Eliot’s hands stilled in her wet hair mid-braid. He peered at the screen, then down at Parker sitting on the floor in front of him.

“You read Hebrew?” he asked. He’d never heard Parker speaking any language except English, even Spanish, which he _knew_ her school had made her learn before they ran away. They’d both picked up some Tagalog in Manila, and Eliot had learned some Spanish in Cabo, but Parker really only _spoke_ English.

Parker shrugged, and Eliot pulled a hand free from her hair and pressed it to her shoulder to remind her to keep still. “Yeah,” she said, like it was obvious. “I’m Jewish.”

Eliot frowned. “Since when?”

“Since forever.” She was starting to sound offended.

“Chill,” Eliot told her, resuming his braiding. “I just didn’t know.”

Parker hummed, sounding relaxed again. “My favorite foster mom was Jewish.”

Eliot kept braiding quietly, working on a bunch of small braids at her hairline he was planning on weaving into a lattice later, and let Parker talk if she felt like it. She so rarely talked about her past, especially before Archie, and he didn’t want to ruin whatever mood it was that had sparked this.

“I lived with her for a year,” Parker continued, her voice sounding far away and wistful. “We went to synagogue every week and she taught me Hebrew. I picked it up really fast. Sometimes the rabbi would just sit and talk with me in Hebrew.” She laughed, sounding free and truly happy for a second. “I was gonna live with her forever. Sometimes while she made breakfast she’d talk about my bat mitzvah. We were gonna have it at the big hotel in town, and she’d talk about silly stuff we’d have. A cotton candy machine. Some boy band or another. Rent a tiger that I could ride that would eat anyone who was mean to me that day.”

She stopped, and Eliot felt the air in the room shift, suddenly still and tense. When half a minute went by and Parker hadn’t continued, he nudged her gently with his knee, his hands still in her hair.

“How come you didn’t stay?” he asked quietly, his curiosity trumping his desire not to upset her. With how important this woman seemed to have been to Parker, whatever happened could be a clue as to Parker’s character now.

“She died,” Parker said bluntly, her voice monotone and unfeeling.

Eliot blew out a breath quietly.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Parker swiped at her eyes and drew up her knees to her chest. Eliot considered letting go of Parker’s hair and giving her some space, but as he paused, debating, Parker glanced back at him.

“You stopped,” she observed. Her eyes were red-rimmed and she seemed to be fighting doggedly against her tears. She turned back to front, and Eliot resumed his braiding.

He braided in silence, eventually finishing the individual braids and starting to work on the hard part, the lattice. He’d been getting better and better at doing hair, and he always wanted to try new ideas out. Parker, who was too impatient to bother doing anything special to her own hair most days, happily offered her head for his experiments.

He could feel Parker’s mood shifting, pulling away from the grief she’d been surrounded by as she recalled her foster mom’s death, more towards a vague, numb peace, and eventually she settled into a nostalgic calm.

“My foster brother at the time had been living there for… I dunno, a few years, at least,” Parker said after a while, sounding light again. “But he never learned Hebrew as well as I did. _And_ I was younger than him,” she added happily.

“How old were you?” Eliot asked mildly, giving her room to not answer if she wanted.

“Eight. I turned nine while I was living there,” she answered, and Eliot felt her come up against the bad memories again and mentally turn on her heel away from them.

Eliot hummed. “Will you teach me Hebrew?” he asked.

Parker laughed, throwing her head back, and Eliot couldn’t help the gripe that came out of his mouth when she messed up his braiding.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings in this chapter for: threats of violence, actual violence (lots of it), descriptions of injury and blood, eye injury (blunt force), mild ableist language, head injury, knives and injuries resulting from their use, death threats, mention of malnourishment

“Across the street is clear,” Parker said, suddenly appearing at Eliot’s elbow. He didn’t flinch; he was the only one in the world Parker couldn’t startle anymore. He knew her too well. 

Eliot put down his night vision binoculars and peered at their mark’s house. They huddled around the side of the next house over, which had been abandoned, more or less, by the owners after Karloff surfaced. 

Eliot and Parker had been keeping an eye on the whole street since they got to Vancouver, marking each house as their turf so other scavengers would know to keep out on pain of Eliot’s fists. The street was at the very edge of the destruction; Karloff’s remains lay two hundred yards due west, and the last house on the block bore significant damage. Eliot and Parker had learned each house’s schedules, enough to plan raids without risking the owners walking in on them digging through their drawers. This was the second house on their list, belonging to a well-to-do older couple who had at least one child newly married and out of the house. 

“Calling card still up?” Eliot asked. 

Each set of scavengers working kaiju-ravaged cities had developed a calling card to mark their turf. Eliot and Parker favored the tried-and-true method of chalking a symbol on the gate or front door, though they used a green Sharpie instead of chalk. Their symbol was a capital “P” with an extra horizontal at the bottom, like a combination of “P” and “E”. It wasn’t the most creative mark, but it got the job done. They were a hitter and a thief, not artists. 

“Yup,” Parker said, pulling a granola bar out of her pocket and unwrapping it. 

“What are you doin’?” Eliot asked, finally looking at her. “We’re about to go in, come on.” 

“I’m hungry,” Parker complained. “You didn’t make dinner before we left.” 

Eliot grumbled under his breath. “Fine,” he said. “But hurry up, we don’t got a huge window of opportunity here.” 

Eliot waited an agonizingly long time, glaring at Parker every now and then while she chewed her chocolate-chip-studded granola bar. He’d tried to tell her that if it had chocolate in it, it probably had no nutritional value, but she didn’t listen. They made up about half her diet anyway. 

Finally she swallowed her last bite and tucked the wrapper away. 

“Ready?” Eliot asked, a heavy hint in his voice.

Parker hummed an affirmative, sounding completely unaffected by his annoyance, and reached for her gloves. 

They slipped around the house and headed for their mark, sticking low and close to the wall just in case someone drove by. At the front door Parker made quick work of the lock and they slipped inside, pulling their flashlights out. 

When they clicked them on, though, Eliot’s blood boiled. 

The house had already been picked over, and by someone who didn’t at all care to be stealthy. The coffee table in the living room had been smashed, and photographs spilled out of a box nearby, many crumpled and torn, a couple with distinct boot prints. One wall had a chunk of drywall missing like someone had literally ripped a painting down. 

Eliot stormed down the hallway to the room he knew was an office of sorts. He heard Parker following him making distressed noises. The computer was gone, and a drawer in the file cabinet had been left open, papers strewn on the floor around it and laying horizontally across the top of the files. 

Eliot cursed and went to the kitchen next. He didn’t expect much of anything of value there, but some houses kept their fine china and silver in the kitchen and he wanted to check his hunch. Sure enough, a china cabinet near the arch leading to the dining room stood with open doors and shards of white and blue ceramic littering the floor. There was only a silver gravy boat left inside. 

“Eliot,” Parker said behind him, and he whirled around. She pointed to the fridge wordlessly, and he moved closer, not seeing what she wanted him to, apparently. 

There was a photograph of some roadside attraction next to some ticket stubs for a sporting event and a calendar, along with some random scraps of paper with what looked like shopping lists and reminders, though each was in French. Each item was held to the fridge with a cutout magnet with flowers on it--except the photograph, which was held up by a round black utility magnet. Upon closer inspection, Eliot saw that the photograph was upside down and too glossy. He took it down and flipped it over. 

It was a postcard, blank on the reverse except the printed lines indicating where to write the address, where to affix the stamp--and a single, loopy letter “Q”, handwritten in blue ink on the note side. 

Eliot snarled. “That  _ fucker.” _

“Who is it?” Parker asked, looking over his shoulder. 

“Quinn.” 

Parker growled, actually fucking growled, and Eliot knew she was just as pissed off as he was. Quinn was no amateur and had thus clearly deliberately ignored their calling card. Maybe he had even sought out houses bearing their mark. Eliot  _ had _ bloodied his nose in Sydney. Maybe this was revenge. 

“Hardison,” Eliot heard Parker say. He turned to look at her. She had two fingers pressed to her ear and her jaw set. She wasn’t looking at Eliot, but at a point somewhere to the left of his shoulder and she listened intently. Eliot pulled his own earbud out of his pocket, turned it on, and stuffed it in his ear. 

There was silence for a half second, and then the other end crackled to life.  _ “What?” _ Hardison asked. He sounded half-asleep, and through his fury Eliot almost felt bad for waking him up. Almost. 

“We need you to find Quinn for us,” Parker said. 

There was a scuffle on the other end and ten seconds of silence.  _ “You realize I’m still in California, right?” _ Hardison asked, sounding annoyed.  _ “I’m not out on the streets with y’all, I can’t go lookin’ for him.” _

Parker made an impatient noise in her throat. “Just find him, okay? He looted one of our houses.” 

_ “I cannot find him from here,” _ Hardison said, emphasizing each syllable.  _ “Okay? I’d need--I don’t know, a military grade satellite or-or a tracker implanted under his skin--am I being hyperbolic enough? Are you getting that I can’t help you?”  _

“Go back to bed, Hardison,” Eliot said, waving a hand at Parker’s furious glare. “We’ll find him ourselves.” 

_ “No, I’m awake now, thanks,” _ Hardison grumbled. There was some indistinct noise in the background on the other end.  _ “Ugh. Go to sleep, Colin… Shut up! At least I’m not unemployed like you!”  _

When he spoke again he sounded resigned.  _ “I’ll do what I can.”  _

“Thanks, Hardison,” Eliot said. 

_ “Yeah, you owe me. Be careful out there. That Quinn dude is messed up.” _

“We will.” 

Eliot turned back to Parker, who was glaring at him, her mouth scrunched up and her hands balled in fists in front of her. 

“Save it for Quinn, alright?” he said, turning his back on her and trusting that she wouldn’t pounce on him. He walked into the foyer again and started up the stairs. 

“What are you doing?” Parker asked, having followed him. 

“Seein’ what all he got. Each dollar he cost us is another punch to his gut, far as I’m concerned,” he responded, continuing up the stairs. Parker smiled darkly, and the sight deeply unsettled Eliot. 

“I like it,” she said, and raced up the stairs two at a time, past Eliot and into the upstairs hallway.

 

* * *

 

 

It was daybreak when they found Quinn. 

They’d stolen a car from near the motel--borrowed, really, they had every intention of taking it back before the owners noticed and cleaning up any trace of its side trip--and driven around the other zones of the wreckage, scanning houses nearby for Quinn’s calling card. He used postcards on the fridge when he was done with a house, but those he marked out ahead of time as his turf he indicated with a brown feather, maybe eight inches long, tucked somewhere it wouldn’t get dislodged by the wind or noticed--unless you knew where to look. 

They drove street after street, slowing in front of each house, the headlights off, peering with night vision binoculars at the front door and gate. Most of the houses in the damage zone had been claimed, though some had been left alone for one reason or another. Empty houses were naturally passed over, as were houses with young children, usually. Most of the looters working for Sophie had developed a common code of ethics, sparing certain houses with vulnerable populations inside and coming down hard on those who could better take it. 

Finally, around half past five in the morning, they found a house bearing Mattingly’s calling card--a fake poppy tucked in the front bushes--and a flashlight visibly moving inside the house. They pulled over. Mattingly had stayed around for two weeks, then left unexpectedly for “family matters”. Whoever was in that house was  _ not _ Craig Mattingly. 

As Eliot shut off the car, Parker stiffened from the passenger seat. “Incoming,” she whispered, and Eliot turned his head to see the house’s front door opening and Quinn stepping out. 

Eliot’s rage flared again, coaxed on by Parker’s fury beside him, and he opened the door, setting his jaw and surreptitiously checking that his knives were where he wanted them in his pockets and strapped to his ankle. 

Quinn looked amused at their arrival and stood in the doorway, leaning casually against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets. As Eliot charged up the front path he heard Parker behind him, felt her anger pulse hot and quick through the air between them. 

“Stay back,” he instructed Parker, and took the porch stairs two at a time. 

He didn’t slow down at all when he reached Quinn, just drew back his fist two steps before and used all of his strength and forward momentum to clock him in the temple. His fist connected, pulling a sharp ‘oof!’ from Quinn as he fell back into the house and onto his ass. Eliot stepped in after him, watching with some sick pleasure as Quinn scrambled backwards on the floor. He heard the door close behind them and felt Parker waiting by the door, readying herself in case Quinn evaded Eliot. The sun was beginning to rise, throwing a thin blue light over the front room of the house, and it was enough to see by. 

Quinn tried to get up but Eliot reached down and grabbed the front of his shirt, dragging him to his feet with little effort. His blood boiled so hot in his veins it was like pulling a toddler off the ground rather than a twenty-something man with at least six inches and twenty pounds on Eliot. He glared hard at Quinn, his anger forcing his power of speech far from his mind. Quinn waited, gingerly blinking to test his vision in the eye Eliot had punched. 

“Hey guys,” he said casually after several seconds, and Eliot growled, let go of him with one hand, and threw another punch. This one Quinn managed to block despite his rapidly swelling eye. He deflected the punch outwards and reached up to slam the heel of his other hand into Eliot’s chin, bashing his teeth together hard. Eliot retreated a couple steps, reaching up to feel his jaw, but it didn’t seem to be dislocated. 

“Much better,” Quinn said, standing up straight and squaring his shoulders. “Now, what’s this about?” he asked, and Eliot snarled low in his throat. 

“It’s  _ about _ you stealin’ our house,” he spat, staunchly ignoring how his teeth felt wrong in his mouth. 

Quinn looked innocent and glanced around the room. “If I remember correctly, this is Mattingly’s house, and if you haven’t noticed,  _ he’s not here. _ He left a week and a half ago.” 

“We ain’t  _ talkin’  _ about this house, an’ you  _ know _ it,” Eliot growled. “This is about the Odlin Road house. That entire street was  _ our turf, _ you  _ fuckin’--” _

“Oh!” Quinn said lightly, cutting Eliot off and slamming a hand to his forehead with a little laugh. “I  _ thought _ I saw some dumbass little mark on the gate.  _ I _ just thought some kindergartener took a Sharpie to it.” He laughed again, looking way too casual for someone who in all likelihood was about to be killed. “My bad, guys.” 

Eliot let out a wordless shout of rage and lunged forward, grabbing Quinn by the front of his shirt with one hand and the arm that came up to block with his other. He threw him to the ground with a hip sweep, slamming him hard down to the wood floor. Quinn hit the ground with a strangled exhalation and Eliot, without pausing to let him move or scramble up, sat on him, straddling his torso, and threw a hard left hook into the good side of Quinn’s face. 

After one punch Quinn seemed to get his bearings and blocked the second, grabbing Eliot by his collar and managing to roll so Eliot was slammed onto the ground instead, with Quinn above him. The force of the ground meeting his back knocked the wind out of him and he couldn’t do anything about the punch that slammed into his brow while he was down. By the third punch he could fight back, and he managed to block the fourth punch, albeit a little weakly. He was lightheaded and could barely see out of his left eye, and Quinn’s weight on his torso meant he couldn’t draw in a full breath in the short pauses between punches. 

Time to fight dirty. 

He drove the heel of his hand into Quinn’s crotch as hard as he could, feeling a surge of dark humor as Quinn recoiled, hunching forward over Eliot’s head. Eliot used his distraction to roll them again, lurch to his feet with some difficulty, and kick Quinn in the ribs. Quinn’s groaning on the ground gave Eliot a couple seconds to recover from getting his head bashed in, and he staggered to the nearby doorway and held on, swaying precariously and breathing hard. His head pounded worryingly and he distantly felt a trickle of something hot down his temple and into his beard stubble. 

He must have accidentally closed his eyes, because the next thing he knew his eyes were flying open as a heavy weight knocked into him and the world went sideways. He landed hard on his side and his head knocked onto the floor, which was luckily carpeted in the hallway Quinn had thrown them into. He heard some faint, high pitched sound, and assumed it was his ears ringing from the blows. Quinn pinned him to the ground, arms trapped under his thighs, and fumbled in his pocket. Eliot watched, unable to do anything but try to wiggle his arms free, as Quinn pulled out a knife and flicked it open. 

Out of the corner of his eye Eliot saw Parker appear in the doorway behind Quinn, her eyes wide with panic, and Eliot willed her to stay out of the way, stay safe. He didn’t get very far on that train of thought, because Quinn held the knife to Eliot’s throat, his free hand braced on Eliot’s chest, breathing hard. Eliot felt the cold metal edge just slightly brushing his skin below his jawline. 

“Let’s get one thing straight,  _ kid,” _ Quinn said in between heaving breaths. “There are no rules here. The law means nothing and  _ fairness _ stopped being real when the first kaiju made landfall. This,” Quinn said, pulling his bracing hand off Eliot’s chest to gesture widely, but he never continued with his sentence because Parker tased him from behind. 

The muscle contractions that wracked Quinn’s body over Eliot’s made him drop the knife, but not before the edge sliced into Eliot’s jaw. Eliot cursed and, when Quinn’s legs stopped squeezing his torso and arms together, shoved Quinn off of him. 

He didn’t dare try to stand up. The last time that happened it had been a bad idea, and now he had a second head wound, which bled like no other. Instead he scooted to sit propped up against the wall, ready to shove himself up if Quinn tried to lunge at him again. He figured he had about half a minute before there was any danger of that. 

“Good call,” he said to Parker, who flicked on the hall light, stepped over Quinn’s twitching body like it was nothing, and knelt in front of Eliot, concern plain on her face. 

“That looks really bad,” she said, reaching out towards Eliot’s face, and he weakly smacked her hand away. 

“Don’t,” he said, and she set her jaw obstinately. She cast a glance over her shoulder at Quinn, still writhing on the floor and looking furious, then stood, picked up the knife from where it had landed, and sent a swift, hard kick into Quinn’s solar plexus. 

She leaned down, knife clutched at her side, to get in Quinn’s face as he curled in on himself, still twitching. “You ever mess with our turf again and I’ll kill you myself,” she hissed, then straightened up, clicked the knife closed, tossed it at Eliot, and went off in search of a bathroom. 

She was back with a couple of washcloths before Quinn recovered. She pressed one into Eliot’s hands and helped him guide it up to the cut on his jaw. 

“How big is it?” Eliot asked, not liking the way the edges of his vision looked watery. 

Parker held up her thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “I don’t think it’s very deep, though,” she said. 

“What about this?” Eliot asked, gesturing with a couple of fingers toward the throbbing at his temple. 

Parker grimaced and reached over with the second washcloth to dab at the sore spot. When the wet cloth met his skin Eliot’s vision started pulsing in time with the throbbing in his head, and he winced and leaned away a little. Parker pulled her hand back and peered at the side of his head. 

“There’s gonna be a bad bump there,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “There’s a cut, maybe this long.” She held up her hand again with her fingers half an inch apart. 

“It’s just--” Quinn panted, trying to draw up to his knees, “--one house. Why’re you… so upset?” 

Parker’s face darkened and she turned her head to look at him, shifted her weight, and kicked at Quinn, purposefully missing by just an inch. It had its intended effect; Quinn recoiled. Parker turned back to Eliot and started dabbing at the cut on his brow again. 

Quinn finally lurched to his feet and stumbled out of the hall. They heard things being hastily gathered from another room, then heavy, shambling footsteps crossing the wooden floors of the front room, and then the front door opening and closing. 

In the silence after Quinn left Eliot could hear the high pitched, faint sound again. It seemed to rise and fall with the pulsing in his head, but Parker frowned and her hand stilled. 

“Do you hear that?” she asked. 

Eliot blinked at her. “I thought that was from this,” he admitted, gesturing to the bruises no doubt rising on his face and the side of his head. 

Without discussing it they decided to search the house. Something about the noise made them both uneasy, and the hairs on the back of Eliot’s neck stood up. 

Parker hauled Eliot to his feet, groaning the whole way. His hands were bruised and a couple of his knuckles split, and his ribs and neck were sore from being slammed on the ground a few times. He didn’t think anything was broken, but he was definitely going to be sore for a few days. He wasn’t particularly confused, and he didn’t think he’d blacked out, so he was pretty sure he didn’t have a concussion, either. 

Eliot kept the cloth pressed to the cut on his jaw and followed Parker down the hall. She looked back before opening the first door to check that he was right behind her, and he nodded at her. 

The door opened to a bedroom, but they didn’t see anything out of place. Eliot waited in the door as she checked the closet, but she shook her head and headed back a moment later. They checked the other bedroom on the first floor, but saw nothing. Upstairs, a third bedroom was empty. Parker saw a pearl necklace on the vanity and stuffed it in her pocket automatically, and Eliot shook his head at her. 

The noise was still coming intermittently, never long enough to follow the sound. 

In the kitchen it seemed to be louder, and Parker searched the pantry while Eliot checked the adjoining dining room. 

He was feeling the wall for secret panels when he heard Parker call out to him shakily. 

He hurried back into the kitchen, almost losing his balance as he rounded the corner. Parker was standing in the door of the pantry, looking stunned into the small cabinet. The noise was louder now, and...familiar. 

“You alright?” Eliot asked before he reached her, but got his answer when he could look into the pantry. 

A young woman sat huddled in the corner at the back of the pantry, staring terrified up at Eliot and Parker, a small baby clutched to her chest. She was dressed plainly in ill-fitting clothes, and the baby was swaddled in a dingy blue blanket. Both had tan skin and dark eyes and hair, and the woman looked gaunt and malnourished. The baby was crying, red-faced and loud, and the woman frantically rocked him. 

Eliot let out a breath and painfully crouched down. “Hi,” he said quietly. 

The young woman winced and cowered further into the pantry. 

“Hey, hey,” Eliot said softly. “It’s alright. We ain’t gonna hurt ya.” 

Her facial expression didn’t betray any understanding, just fear. 

“I don’t think she speaks English,” Parker whispered. 

“Ya think?” Eliot asked sarcastically. 

Parker made a frustrated noise and the young woman’s eyes flicked back and forth between them warily. 

“Español?” Eliot asked, and the woman looked at him blankly. “Tagalog?” 

The woman shifted the baby in her arms and something shiny at her neck caught Eliot and Parker’s eye. It was a Magen David, small and gold, on a chain around her neck. 

Parker let out a breath and crouched down next to Eliot. She pointed to her own throat and then at the woman, who looked down, saw the necklace, and clapped a hand over it, looking up with renewed terror. 

“ את מדברת עיברית?” Parker asked. 

The woman’s eyes widened. “קצת,” she replied. Eliot frowned and looked at Parker, raising an eyebrow. 

“She speaks a little Hebrew,” Parker translated. 

Parker started talking to the woman in Hebrew. There were several times where gaps in their understanding of the language made communication fall apart, but they both spoke enough for Parker to introduce herself and Eliot, communicate that they were trying to help, and for the woman to say that her name was Sevilen, she was from Turkey, and the baby was her son Kiral. 

Each time Eliot moved, Sevilen watched him warily, flinching if he moved too fast, and whenever he spoke she shifted farther back into the corner. 

All attempts to ask what she was doing there were met with incomprehension, so when Parker finally coaxed Sevilen out of the pantry and settled her on the couch in the living room, Eliot made a call while Parker sat with her, making stilted conversation. 

_ “I swear to God if y’all don’t let me sleep--” _ Hardison said when he picked up. Eliot felt a little bad; it was a little past six in the morning, and they’d last heard from him around four while they looked for Quinn. 

“Hey, sorry, it’s kind of an emergency,” Eliot said, cutting him off and trying to sound apologetic. 

_ “Wh--Really? What’s going on? You find Quinn?” _

“Yeah, yeah, he’s not gonna bother us again,” Eliot said quickly. “Listen, we found a young woman--really young, maybe my age--and her baby in the house we found Quinn in. We don’t think they’re hurt but she doesn’t speak English, and she’s real scared.” 

Hardison let out a breath.  _ “Damn.”  _

“You know anyone who speaks Turkish?” 

_ “Turkish?”  _ There was a pause while Hardison hummed in thought.  _ “No, don’t think so. Sophie should be up, though, and she knows more people than I do.”  _

Eliot sighed. “Alright, thanks.” 

_ “Godspeed,” _ Hardison said. 

“Go to sleep, kid.” 

_ “Oh, I will.”  _

Eliot looked back into the living room while he dialed Sophie. Parker locked eyes with him and made a panicked face and he gave her a thumbs up. 

_ “Eliot,” _ Sophie answered. She sounded out of breath. 

“Hey, sorry to call so early. Am I interrupting?” Eliot asked. Every time he called Sophie he felt like he was bothering her with stupid questions. 

_ “No, not at all. I was finishing my run. What’s wrong?” _

“I--we, uh. Long story short, we found a girl in a house an’ her baby an’ she’s scared an’ doesn’t speak English,” Eliot said in a rush, his cheeks burning. 

There was a pause.  _ “How old is she? Did you break into her house?”  _

“She’s maybe twenty, if that, an’ this ain’t her house. She’s not in any of the pictures an’ she ain’t a squatter either. The people in this house haven’t evacuated,” Eliot explained, remembering the fresh food in the fridge when they were searching the house. 

Sophie hummed.  _ “Strange. What are  _ you  _ doing in that house, then? Actually, no, best I don’t know.”  _

“You know anyone who speaks Turkish?” Eliot asked. “She speaks a little bit of Hebrew, an’ so does Parker, but not enough.” 

Sophie was quiet for almost a minute. Eliot was about to check if she’d hung up when she finally spoke. 

_ “Text me the address, I’ll be there.” _

“You speak Turkish?” Eliot asked, disbelieving. He didn’t  _ think _ Sophie was Turkish, but then again he didn’t know where she  _ was _ from, so he guessed she  _ could  _ have been from Turkey. 

_ “No, but I know someone who does.”  _

“Who?” Eliot asked. Whoever it was must be bad news if Sophie herself was going to come along. 

Sophie let out a breath.  _ “Nate Ford.”  _


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> READ THIS; VERY IMPORTANT: this chapter contains discussions of potentially very triggering material, detailed below. the more sensitive things are not discussed explicitly and do not happen real-time but please please practice self-care if you choose to read on. 
> 
> warnings in this chapter for: reference to alcohol and alcoholism, injury, blood, mention of eye injuries (blunt force trauma), kidnapping (in the past, non-explicit), sex trafficking (in the past, non-explicit), nonconsensual drugging (in the past, non-explicit), child/adolescent sexual abuse resulting in a pregnancy (in the past, non-explicit), death threats, powerful people doing very bad things (non-explicit), ableism

Eliot avoided telling Parker who their translator would be until ten minutes after Sophie texted to let him know she was on her way and that Ford had agreed to come. Parker made a frustrated noise and was about to start cursing Ford before he even arrived, but one look at Sevilen next to her on the couch had Eliot putting out a hand to stop her. 

Sevilen had relaxed a little around Parker, enough that she could properly focus on calming her son, though when Parker got upset she paled and shrank back. She still watched Eliot anxiously and avoided responding to his questions, even those translated into Hebrew by Parker. When her stomach growled audibly while they waited, she wrapped her free arm around her middle in embarrassment and nervously rejected all of Parker’s offers to get her some food. Eliot, having gone out to their “borrowed” car to get their stuff, dug through his bag and offered her a granola bar, which she cautiously took but didn’t eat. 

After a little while Sophie arrived, and she greeted Eliot and Parker distractedly and said hello to Sevilen. She spoke Hebrew as well, it turned out, though Eliot wasn’t surprised; she knew so many other languages. After introductions were made, Sophie fussed over Eliot’s injuries for a minute or two and then sat across the room alternately chewing her lip in thought and scrolling through something or another on her phone, evidently getting started on her work for the day. 

Fifteen minutes after Sophie arrived another car pulled up in front of the house. Eliot went out onto the front porch to receive Ford and brief him. He distantly worried that Ford would show up with reinforcements to arrest everyone in the house, but Ford alone stepped out of the car. He wore jeans and a brown hoodie with some kind of yellow paint splattered on one sleeve, the first time Eliot had ever seen him out of uniform. 

As he walked up to the front porch Eliot crossed his arms, intending to keep as much information as he could close to his chest. 

“Spencer,” Ford said, and Eliot wasn’t sure when or how he’d learned about his alias. 

“Admiral,” he said in greeting as Ford stopped in front of him, electing to move on. 

Ford winced a little. He looked exhausted, or maybe hungover. “It’s Captain now,” he corrected. “Soon to be Mister.” 

Eliot blinked in surprise. “You got demoted?” he asked, the question coming out much more gleeful than he’d intended. 

“Yeah, uh,” Ford said, then pointed at the door. “Said someone needs translating?” 

“Yeah,” Eliot confirmed, then put out a hand when Ford made to go inside. “Listen. She’s real scared of everything, you can’t just go barging in there.” 

Ford stopped and frowned at him. “Who is she?” 

Eliot shrugged. “We just found her. All we know is that her name is Sevilen, her son’s name is Kiral, she’s from Turkey, and she’s Jewish. She doesn’t speak any English and she barely speaks Hebrew.” 

Ford narrowed his eyes at Eliot. “What do you want with her?” 

Eliot gaped at him, taken aback. “We just want to help,” he said, offended. “We’re not monsters.” 

Ford smiled sarcastically, his eyes tight. “No, just criminals.” 

Eliot’s jaw tightened. He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose so he wouldn’t go picking a fight with Ford. Admiral or not, he could still have Eliot and Parker, and probably Sophie, arrested and locked away forever. 

“Fine, whatever, just go in quietly and try not to scare her, alright?” Eliot said when he was calm enough. 

Ford nodded solemnly and somehow folded in on himself to make himself seem smaller, though his posture didn’t change at all. He brushed past Eliot and opened the door, and Eliot followed, not wanting to miss whatever was about to happen. The way he figured, Sevilen would either talk to Ford openly and clear everything up, or she would cower into the couch and refuse to even look at him. The second option was currently winning in his mind. 

Sevilen’s eyes widened when Ford and Eliot entered the house. Her eyes flicked mistrustfully between everyone in the room, though she watched Ford especially. He smiled softly, encouragingly, and stopped a fair distance away from her. 

He began speaking quietly in Turkish, presumably introducing himself. Sevilen blinked in surprise, but stayed silent. After introducing himself and presumably saying a little about why he was there, Ford nodded politely and seemed to make an excuse, then turned away from Sevilen. 

Sophie had watched Ford since he entered, phone still in hand but forgotten. When Ford turned towards her she stood. 

“Nate,” she said quietly, and it could have been Eliot’s imagination, but he definitely thought her whole demeanor became smoother, more flirtatious. Eliot made a face and looked at Parker, whose expression mirrored how Eliot felt: confused, intrigued, a little disgusted. 

“Miss Devereaux,” Ford said with a little smile. “I could get in a lot of trouble being here, you know,” he said. 

Sophie rolled her eyes and gave a little shrug. “How much more trouble could you possibly get into because of me?” she asked with a slight smirk. 

Ford grimaced faintly. “Fair point.” 

Sophie let out a tiny sigh and smiled in earnest. “It’s good to see you.” 

Ford smiled back. “You too.” 

Eliot cleared his throat, and all eyes in the room went to him. Eliot raised his eyebrows at Ford, who let out an almost imperceptible sigh. 

“Right.” 

Ford dragged over a chair and sat a yard away from the couch, resting his elbows on his knees and speaking to Sevilen in Turkish. After a while without any response, she finally began talking, one-word answers at first and then gradually more and more. She always avoided meeting Ford’s eyes, though, electing instead to pick at stray threads on her sleeve cuff or adjust Kiral’s blanket as he dozed on the couch next to her. 

Eliot leaned against the wall well away from the conversation so as not to be intrusive, and after a few minutes Parker joined him. They alternately paid attention to what was going on between Sevilen and Ford, even though they couldn’t understand a word, and zoned out, exhausted from the night’s events. 

Eliot’s cuts had stopped bleeding, and after growing bored with the inaction in the living room he went to the bathroom and cleaned himself up a little, catching his reflection for the first time since sustaining the injuries. There were smears of dried blood down his cheek from the cut on his brow and down his neck into the collar of his black shirt from the cut on his jaw. His right eye was swollen halfway shut, and dark purple bruises covered half his face. He carefully washed away the dried blood on his face, careful not to pass the wet washcloth over the cuts, and ran his bruised and split knuckles under cold water. 

When he returned to the living room he found Parker standing in the doorway, clearly waiting for him, and Ford sitting slumped in his chair, rubbing his fingers together and frowning in thought. Sophie was back on her phone, and Sevilen’s eyes were red and she wiped at them quickly. 

Eliot waited in the door until Ford noticed him. Ford hauled himself out of the chair and walked towards Eliot, then past him, down the hall, and into a bedroom, beckoning over his shoulder just before disappearing. Eliot raised his eyebrows at Parker and inclined his head, then followed Ford. He felt Parker lock step just behind him. 

Ford was already heavily in thought by the time they entered the bedroom, and he furrowed his brow for a moment. 

“I’m going to call some of my men to come get her,” Ford said. “Take her somewhere safe.” 

Parker protested and Ford held up a hand, still not looking at them. “You can’t keep her safe by yourselves, kids, please.” 

“What happened to her? What’d she say?” Eliot asked. 

Ford sighed and sat on the edge of the messy bed. “She was taken from her home by someone claiming to be a missionary when she was sixteen,” he said. “They brought her here, smuggled her out of Turkey, kept her drugged the whole time.” 

Parker had gone still next to Eliot, and he could feel anxiety radiating off of her. Or maybe it was his own. 

“They, uh, kept her here, in this house,” Ford said, running a hand through his hair. “The man of the house, he…” 

Ford trailed off and waved a hand vaguely. 

“Kiral, the baby, he’s… a product of that,” Ford said with difficulty, and Eliot felt Parker go even more still, if that was possible. 

Eliot, though, felt his anger rising again. His hands clenched into fists at his sides, and the ache of his knuckles turning into sharp pain only egged on his fury. 

“I’m gonna tear the guy’s head off,” Eliot muttered. Ford’s eyebrows twitched and the corner of his mouth turned up just a little. After a second, though, the expression shuttered. 

“No, you’re not,” Ford said firmly. “The proper authorities will take care of him.” He passed a hand through his hair again. “Not sure how I’m gonna explain finding her,” he muttered to himself. 

“Where are the people who live here?” Parker asked. 

“Out for the weekend,” Ford said. “They leave her here all the time.” His features hardened. “She’s too scared to leave. She tried escaping once, but no one could understand her when she tried to get help. They found her before she could make anyone understand.” 

“And the whole family, they’re in on it? Not just the guy?” Eliot asked. 

Ford nodded slowly. “No kids, just the man, his wife, and two of their sisters. She’s not sure whose sister is whose. All of them are in on it.” 

Eliot furrowed his brow. “What makes you think we can’t keep her safe? You’ve seen what we can do.” 

Ford huffed out a laugh. “If it were just them I wouldn’t be worried. It’s  _ who _ the man is that worries me.” 

Eliot shrugged when Ford paused, not getting what he was insinuating. 

“The man of the house,” Ford said, “is a powerful local politician.” 

Eliot let out a breath, closing his eyes. “Shit,” he muttered. 

“What?” Parker asked in a whisper. 

Eliot responded without opening his eyes. “He’s got staff,” he explained. “People who get paid to do  _ unpleasant _ things for him and keep him out of trouble.” 

“Oooh,” Parker groaned. 

Ford looked at his watch, seeming to remember something. 

“It’s getting close to eight. They should be back soon,” he said. “She thought they’d already come back. Said she heard fighting after a while, though. Guess that was you,” he observed, gesturing to Eliot’s injuries. 

Eliot grimaced. 

“Who were you fighting?” Ford asked, crossing his arms in a gesture that was incredibly paternal. 

“Guy named Quinn,” Eliot grunted. 

“He stole one of our houses,” Parker explained, looking furious again. “So we followed him and beat him up.” 

Ford pursed his lips. “I could have you arrested for those two sentences alone,” he said. Eliot and Parker froze. “But I won’t. You did a good thing today,” he said solemnly. 

Parker let out a relieved sigh. 

Ford stood and brushed past them and out of the bedroom. They followed, not sure what was happening. 

In the living room Ford stopped near the couch and spoke to Sevilen. Her eyes grew steadily wider and more fearful as she listened, and she pulled her son up off the couch to cradle him close. She asked a breathless question, and Ford answered with what sounded like an affirmative. 

When he was done he turned to Sophie. 

“I’m calling some of my men,” he informed her. “I doubt you’ll want to be here when they show up.” He looked at Parker and Eliot, waiting just inside the door, fixing them with a meaningful look for a couple seconds each and then back at Sophie.

Sophie pursed her lips and stood, coming close to Ford. 

“You’ll fill me in later?” she asked, leaning even more into his personal space. 

Ford nodded, a slight smile on his face. “Tonight? The usual place?” 

“Nine o’clock. Don’t be late,” Sophie ordered, and Ford smiled. 

Parker made a face at Eliot, who shook his head in disgust. 

“Let’s get out of here,” Eliot muttered, and Parker agreed quickly. 

They swiftly gathered their things. Sophie watched them, and Ford sat on the couch, hands folded in his lap in forced casualness. 

“Keep me updated, won’t you?” Sophie asked them, pulling Eliot into a quick hug and giving Parker a fist bump. 

“‘Course,” Eliot replied. 

“Put some ice on that,” Sophie ordered, gesturing to her own eyebrow and then at Eliot’s face. 

“I know,” Eliot assured her. 

Sophie smiled softly. 

Parker said a quick goodbye to Sevilen, and Eliot waved from across the room. Surprisingly, she returned the wave, and softly thanked Parker in Hebrew. 

Ford watched them until they were about to walk out the door. “I catch you again I’m not gonna let you go,” he warned quietly from the couch. 

Eliot shrugged. “You’re not gonna catch us,” he replied. 

They left, and the entire ride back to the house they’d “borrowed” the car from was filled with a contemplative silence. 

Eliot felt the whirlwind of emotions in Parker. She was happy that Sevilen was free, proud of herself for helping, scared for Sevilen and Kiral’s futures, angry at the politician, and most of all, terrified to her core at the vague description of what had happened to Sevilen. 

He had never understood why some people didn’t think Parker had feelings. She’d been insulted and taunted her whole life, even after running away and travelling the world. They called her a robot, an ‘it’, ‘emotionally stunted’, and insults so nasty Eliot couldn’t think about them without becoming angry. 

But Parker felt things. She felt deeply, wildly, pervasively. Her emotions had sharp edges, bright colors, felt like bricks on her shoulders and feathers in her stomach. Eliot wouldn’t have been surprised if she felt more strongly than anyone else in the world. Even being around her was an intense experience. Eliot could  _ feel _ it. 

But her face rarely displayed the depth of her emotion, so she was ridiculed. 

“You’re sad,” Parker observed as they walked to the motel. 

“Yeah,” Eliot confirmed. 

“She’s going to be okay,” she assured him, and he felt how deep her conviction was. 

“Okay,” he said, genuinely comforted about Sevilen, though it wasn’t all of what he was sad about. 

But if Parker was sure, it was bound to be true. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings in this chapter for: mild threats of violence, mention of sex, mention of alcohol, mention of animal (kaiju) death, mention of kidnapping and wrongful imprisonment, mention of alcoholism, reference to adolescent sexual abuse and kidnapping, mention of murder, and mention of parental death

“Be careful with that!” Hardison snapped, yanking the battered laptop out of Parker’s hands. “This thing is my lifeblood.” 

Eliot snorted as he hauled two heavy duffels into the hotel room. 

“Your lifeblood is a crappy laptop with a cracked screen and duct tape holding it together?” he asked, carrying the bags through the front room and into the bedroom, where he dropped Parker’s on one of the beds and his own on the other. 

Hardison glared through the door at him. “It’s what I got, okay? And I’ve overclocked it so much I don’t think any of its guts are original to the shell.” 

Eliot put up his hands in surrender as he came back. “You know, kid, we could just steal you a better one.” 

Parker paused in her cursory search of the hotel’s nooks and crannies for secrets. “I’ve always wanted to rob a Best Buy.” 

Hardison looked put out at both of them. “I can’t just!--look, okay, sure, I could use a rig with a better screen and a numeric keypad and better graphics.” He flopped onto the couch and tapped the computer as he talked to them like they were children instead of three and five years older than him. “But the time it would take to get a new machine, even if it were better than this one to start out with, up to date with all the programs and data I have on here… I’d rather just use that time to upkeep this thing and watch  _ Game of Thrones _ for free with my HBO backdoor.” 

He grinned and Parker hummed, once again on hands and knees under the small table in the front room. 

“What’s  _ Game of Thrones?” _ she asked. 

“Ser-seriously?” Hardison asked, sitting forward, his mouth dropping open. He looked at Eliot as if to ask if Parker was joking, and Eliot just shook his head blankly.  _ “Game of Thrones.  _ Nothing?” When neither Parker nor Eliot responded, he made frustrated noises and waved his hands in the air. “How? How do you survive in society? It is the year of our Lord 2015. Do you even  _ watch _ television?” 

Eliot made a face. “We  _ don’t _ survive in society, kid. Thieves, remember? Looters? Your  _ job?” _

“We watch tv,” Parker said, now starting to climb onto the counters in the small kitchenette. “I like  _ NCIS.  _ Wish I knew what happened in the first ten seasons, though.” 

Hardison put his head into his hands. “I can’t believe I chose to live with you people. Alright, when we get back from this meeting I’m gonna introduce you to Netflix. Because, really, we can’t be living in the same building if you don’t know the first thing about modern media.” 

He shook his head and stood, carrying his laptop under his arm into the bedroom. Eliot watched as he stopped in front of one of the beds, then poked at Eliot’s duffel. 

“Where’s my stuff?” Hardison asked. 

“Still in the car,” Eliot said. “I ain’t carrying your shit in.” 

Hardison looked back at him and made a face, then shoved Eliot’s bag onto the floor without looking. Eliot’s hands balled into fists and he took an angry step towards Hardison. 

“I get this bed if you won’t even help me carry my stuff inside,” Hardison said, plopping his computer down onto the bed and making no notice of Eliot’s advance. 

“Kid,” Eliot said warningly, stopping a yard short of Hardison so he wouldn’t be tempted. 

Hardison finally reacted, taking a step backwards. “What?” he asked defiantly, his tone not matching his alarmed posture. “I won’t be bullied into carrying all my own stuff if you two are just going to take the only two beds.” 

“Sofa bed,” Parker called from the front room, and Hardison scoffed. 

“That tiny little thing?” he asked, his voice pitching upwards. “Y’all, I am five-nine and  _ growing. _ That’s taller than both of you. I can’t sleep on a sofa bed.” 

Eliot took a step forward and Hardison shrank back. Eliot just shouldered past him, picked up his duffel from the floor, locked eyes with Hardison, and dropped his bag back onto the bed. Hardison snatched his laptop off the foot of the bed, muttering in annoyance, and went back into the front room. He slid his computer onto the table and headed for the door, which opened just before his hand touched the knob. 

Eliot automatically took a step towards the door to defend their home base, but Ford was the only one to come through the door. Eliot stopped in the bedroom door, crossing his arms and leaning on the door jamb. 

He wasn’t happy that they were working with Ford-- _ Nate-- _ now. It was Sophie’s idea, and yeah, Nate was good, and needed something to do with his time since being booted from the Navy. But Eliot didn’t want to work  _ this _ closely with him. Parker agreed with him, and Hardison had spent half of the short flight from Vancouver to Anchorage complaining about  _ fraternizing with the enemy _ or something or other. 

“These walls are thin,” Nate said, squinting meaningfully at Eliot and Hardison in turn. 

“Ew,” Parker breathed from behind the entertainment center, making Nate jump. She poked her head out, making a face at Nate. “Does that mean we have to listen to you and Sophie having sex?” 

Hardison coughed in surprise, and Eliot barely hid a snicker. 

Nate grimaced. He turned to go, but came back a moment later. “We are not together. We have separate rooms. But keep it down anyway. Meeting in an hour. Hotel restaurant, northeast corner.” 

Hardison smiled sarcastically and Parker stuck out her tongue at Nate’s back as he left, and Eliot only barely held back his snarky retort. 

As soon as the door was closed Hardison turned back to the other two. 

“Why don’t I get a real bed?” he whined. 

“We’re older than you,” Parker said, at the same time Eliot said, “go get your shit, we gotta get movin’.” 

Hardison muttered to himself, pulling his coat back on. 

An hour later, all of their things moved from Nate’s rental car to their suite, they met Nate and Sophie in the hotel restaurant. 

The corner table was secluded from the rest of the restaurant both in terms of distance and the fact that it was the only occupied table in the entire room. Sophie had a glass of wine and Nate had a glass of scotch, and they were sharing an order of what looked like spinach and artichoke dip when Eliot, Parker, and Hardison slid into the round booth. 

Parker, trapped between Eliot and Hardison, for some reason waited until she was sitting to take off her gloves and coat, and Eliot grumbled as she elbowed him trying to wrestle the jacket off of her shoulders. 

“It’s too cold here,” Sophie complained. She looked at Nate. “Am I the only one who thinks it’s too cold here?” 

Nate just raised his eyebrows and took a sip of his drink. 

“It is way too cold,” Hardison agreed. He’d kept his jacket on and he rubbed his hands together. 

_ “Thank _ you,” Sophie said. “Why does anyone even live in Alaska?” she muttered to herself. 

“I like it,” Parker said, finally free of her coat, which she spread over her lap. “It’s more of a challenge.” 

Nate didn’t say anything, but his quirked eyebrow silently asked Parker what the hell she meant. 

“When it’s cold, you can see your breath,” Parker explained, slowly, like she was explaining to an infant. “When you can see your breath it means  _ other _ people can see your breath. And if you’re trying to stay  _ hidden, _ like if you’re a  _ thief, _ it’s harder. Because you can see your breath.” 

“Ah,” Nate said, looking like he was dying to lecture Parker about law-breaking or whatever it was that he didn’t like about Parker. 

“Plus, snow,” Parker added, and reached for a chip, leaving her addition hanging in the air with no explanation. 

Sophie shivered and wrinkled her nose. “I hate snow. October shouldn’t have snow.” 

Eliot shrugged and reached for some dip. “It’s Alaska, Soph. Not sure what you were expecting.” 

“Why on earth did a kaiju come here?” Sophie mumbled. “Nothing, absolutely nothing of value in Anchorage.” 

“Aw, come on,” Hardison said, putting out a hand and sounding offended. “Anchorage is the ceremonial start of the Iditarod.” 

Eliot stared at him. “How do you know about the Iditarod?” 

Hardison bristled. “I read. How do  _ you _ know about the Iditarod?” 

Eliot growled. “My  _ gifted  _ program in elementary school made us do a whole bunch of projects on it.” 

“Alright, alright, alright,” Nate said, waving at them until they stopped grumbling at each other. “We should get started. Sled dog races can wait.” 

_ “Sled dogs?” _ Parker gasped. 

Nate cleared his throat and Eliot grinned at Parker. 

“Yeah, see, the Iditarod is an annual sled dog race and it starts--” Eliot began, ignoring Nate’s stare and feeling entirely satisfied with himself. 

_ “Okay,” _ Nate interrupted. “Can we  _ please  _ get started?” 

Sophie snickered into her glass of wine and winked at Eliot. 

“I can’t win,” Nate said to no one in particular. 

“No, no, I’m sorry,” Sophie said, putting her wine down and leaning into Nate’s arm. “Go. Talk,” she said lightly. 

Nate squinted at her for a moment. 

“Okay,” he finally said. “So. It’s now a little over two days since Hardship fell. The Kaiju Response Taskforce will be completely set up in whatever base they’ve found by now. The science teams will be gathering what data and specimens they can salvage. Pentecost should be overseeing that part. Sterling will be in charge of security.”

Nate sounded like he was talking to himself. Eliot and Parker listened somewhat blankly until Sterling was mentioned. Parker made a face and Eliot couldn’t help the derisive scoff that escaped him. The noise seemed to snap Nate out of whatever train of thought was distracting him. He cleared his throat. 

“There will be a two-hundred-yard perimeter set up around the kaiju corpse,” he continued, but seeming fully engaged and speaking to the others this time. “So anything we do will have to be mindful of that.” 

“Do we have any targets?” Sophie asked Hardison. 

Hardison produced his laptop from somewhere and opened it on the table. “Working on it,” he said. “I’m scanning social media and FEMA calls. KRT frequencies and internal comm is next on my list.”

Eliot would have never admitted, it even under torture, but he was actually pretty impressed by Hardison. Not many thirteen year olds could even hold an intelligent conversation, and Hardison was effectively hacking the world governments without raising any alarms. 

Nate frowned. “How long have you been tapped into KRT? You can’t do that.” 

Sophie rolled her eyes. “You can stop with that, you’re one of us now.” 

Nate grimaced. “No, I am not a criminal.”

“Right,” Sophie said, raising her wine glass. “You were formally disciplined and discharged from the Navy because you were too much of an honest man.” She casually took a sip of her wine, her eyebrows raised, and Eliot bit back a smirk. 

Nate looked like he was going to argue, but the expression dropped. “Whatever,” he muttered. “The point is, the KRT frequencies are a matter of international security.” 

Hardison waved a hand dismissively. “It’s alright, I got more security on this computer than Fort Knox. No one’s gettin’ that information ‘cept us.” 

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” Nate replied. 

Parker laughed and Nate looked puzzled at her, but she didn’t explain, just kept smiling. 

“Hold up, I may have something,” Hardison said suddenly, and began typing quickly. After a moment he read from the screen. “‘Just got home. Been held without food or water for two days by a group of men claiming to be military. Never got a phone call or lawyer. They took my phone and wallet. About to find a hospital with room to see me. Accounts may be compromised. If someone claiming to be me contacts you don’t answer and block the account. Something really wrong going on here.’” 

Nate pursed his lips. “That’s definitely not the KRT. We caught wind of a group like that in Cabo but we never found them.” 

Hardison typed for half a minute and then whistled low. “This lady works for the Department of Defense.” 

Nate nodded. “Sounds about right. Okay, she’s our first client. Can you find her?” 

Hardison laughed. “Course I can. Give me five minutes.” 

“We’ll need to get started soon,” Nate said. “We need supplies. Eliot, Parker, you do that. I’ll send you a list of what we’ll need and brief you when we get back.” He turned to Sophie. “I assume you’re coming with me to talk to her?” 

“Of course,” Sophie said. 

Eliot held his hand out to Nate. “Keys,” he said. 

Nate frowned. “That rental’s under my name.” 

Eliot rolled his eyes. “I won’t crash it. Scout’s honor, or whatever,” he said, holding up a hand in what he thought was the Boy Scout hand sign. 

“Wrong hand,” Nate said, then studied him for a long second. Finally he sighed and dug around in his pocket. “We’ll take Sophie’s rental.” 

Eliot’s hand closed around the keys and he grinned. 

“Are we going to prank him?” Parker asked in a whisper as she, Hardison, and Eliot slid out of the booth. 

“What was that?” Nate asked from behind them. 

“Nothing,” Parker said quickly, looking sheepish and urging Eliot out of the room. “Are we?” she asked again when they were well out of earshot.

 

* * *

 

It was weird, helping people. Sure, Eliot and Parker had helped people before, even as looters, you know, helping the odd lost kid find their parents and whatnot, but doing it full time was weird. For the first six months they only helped maybe half the time, continuing to loot whenever they could. 

They first made a conscious effort to help two weeks after finding Sevilen and Kiral. After that, looting had just seemed… empty and mean. Even Parker didn’t get as much enjoyment out of it as she had before finding them. They’d sought out the poorer areas of Vancouver and helped out doing odd jobs for a handful of residents for a few days, and felt better. Then, still not wanting to go completely white hat, they’d gone back to looting the rich areas of Vancouver for a week. It was a satisfying rhythm, and they kept up with it for a couple of months. 

When the city had mostly recovered they’d started helping more, since there wasn’t much else to do with their time. 

Two months in, they had called on Sophie, intending to discuss leaving the partnership and going freelance since they could hardly keep up with her fees since they weren’t looting full time. To their surprise, Sophie had been going through the same crisis and change of heart that they had, and was heavily considering handing off the network to a colleague and walking away. At that meeting the three of them had decided to work together, still looting and selling their catches, but also doing more to help the people hit hardest by the Kaiju attacks. She passed the network to Starke, her second-in-command, and walked away two weeks later. 

When, a month after  _ that, _ they had realized that just the three of them could barely do anything to help anyone without tech support, they considered adding a hacker to their group. Hardison had obviously been their first choice, and a very short negotiation later he officially joined their new partnership. He’d stayed in San Francisco with Nana for a while, but when the group relocated to Anchorage he’d insisted on joining them. 

The four of them had considerable talents, but none had the skill necessary for the level of help they wanted to give: organization. Sophie could talk her way to a resolution, Hardison could hack into the deep recesses of any computer in the world, Parker could steal just about anything, and Eliot could patch them up, keep them safe, and fight his way through anyone. But their first few coordinated jobs had been… lacking. Their plans had been vague and poorly executed, relied too heavily on one of them, their backup plans had been unrealistic… they’d needed help. 

And then Nate Ford had been reprimanded and dishonorably discharged from the Navy for fraternizing with known criminals and a handful of minor security leaks due to his alcoholism. 

Now there was a man who could plan and coordinate. When he was sober, that is.

It had taken three months of negotiations and convincing to get him to join the crew, and even then he’d had reservations. He’d been a real pain in the ass that first bit, when they officially gathered as a crew of five for the first time in Anchorage, complaining over and over about  _ criminals _ or whatever. But he’d stayed, and had even circumvented dozens of laws to get the crew where they needed to be to help their clients. 

“It’s different,” he’d muttered. “I break laws to  _ help _ people. The laws I break are actively harmful to our clients.” He’d pursed his lips in thought and then smirked. “Except child labor laws. Those are good. But I’m breaking them anyway,” he’d said, gesturing to Parker and Hardison, the former of whom had exclaimed that she was  _ seventeen, that doesn’t count, I’m old enough. _

Sevilen and Kiral were safe. The Kaiju Response Taskforce had taken them in as refugees until Sevilen could be reunited with her family in Turkey. Meanwhile, under Ford’s guidance, both the government of British Columbia and the federal government of Canada had stepped in and charged the politician with a dozen charges, and he’d been convicted of all but one. His wife and sisters, too. They were going to spend the next, oh, six centuries in prison. And Eliot and Parker still had to continuously convince themselves not to kill the guy in prison. They could have. They were very good. 

The group had continued to follow the kaiju attacks, to Anchorage, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Lima… The kaiju were coming faster and faster now, sometimes only a couple of months apart. 

In Tokyo they’d reconnected a little girl with the jaeger pilots who had rescued her from the kaiju. She’d been seven, orphaned in the attack and chased by the monster down the streets until the jaeger had caught up and given her the chance to get away. It had been three weeks before Eliot and Parker, with Hardison assisting from their base, had found her, living on her own in a partially collapsed house, deeply traumatized and not quite old enough to take care of herself. The pilots had been on the news several times since the attack asking after her and wanting to help. 

Nate had refused to go to the meeting when the pilots and the little girl were reunited, faking a stomach virus, and a week afterwards the others had found out that one of the pilots, a handsome black man with a silly mustache, had been on the Kaiju Response Taskforce when Nate had been in the Navy. 

Last they’d heard, the pilot, Stacker Pentecost, was going to adopt the girl. 

In each city they’d looted less and less until they were helping full time and only stealing the odd item that they’d wanted for themselves or to supplement their income. Diamonds here and there, first edition books, paintings and sculptures and collectibles… Nate had disapproved of it all. 

Which was why Parker was now sitting at the conference table at their new (temporary) headquarters in Los Angeles, a year and a half into their partnership, arms crossed over a package wrapped in brown paper and trying to project the image of someone who wasn’t hiding anything. 

“Okay, so Eliot, you’re on transport,” Nate said, leaning down to write in his notebook. “Perry will be at the drop at oh-nine-hundred hours and knows what to expect. Don’t,” he said slowly, looking up and fixing Eliot with a stare, “tell him Lockwood will be at the warehouse.” 

Eliot grunted an affirmative and Nate’s eyes wandered, and his brow furrowed as his gaze landed on Parker. Eliot felt her stiffen next to him. 

“What’s that?” Nate asked, his voice casual, nodding at the brown paper package on the table. 

Parker slid it off the table and into her lap, her face carefully neutral. “Nothing.” 

“Doesn’t look like nothing,” Nate said. “Come on, what is it?” 

Parker shrugged, the casual gesture looking forced, and her eyes darted about furtively. “Just… you know, something I picked up for myself.” 

Nate sighed. “And by ‘picked up’ do you mean ‘stole’?” 

Parker didn’t answer, just pressed her mouth into a hard line. 

“Listen, Parker, I’m not mad,” Nate said, sounding tired. “I’ve said it before, I don’t  _ care _ if you steal on your own time. Just don’t make it traceable back to us. We don’t need the press.”

Parker looked offended. “When have I ever stolen something and the job was traceable? In my life? Nothing.” She huffed. “I’m untrackable.” 

“Now you’ve got me curious,” Sophie said, nudging Parker with her shoulder. “Come on, what is it?” she asked, but took a sip of her tea to diffuse the tension and make it sound less like a demand. 

Parker gave in, cracking a smile. Pride radiated off of her as she slid the heavy package back onto the table, handling it carefully. 

Eliot grinned as she gingerly unwrapped the paper. It was their best work to date, and they’d done it purely for a fun challenge. They’d even brought Hardison along the night before, to deal with the annoying security systems. 

The big book was impossibly old, but its ornate leather cover had been meticulously maintained. The cover and spine had brass detailing and clasps held the book closed. It was over a foot long and nearly as wide, and almost four inches thick. Parker had been carrying it around all day, despite it weighing at least thirty pounds. 

When Parker slid the paper out from under the book and carefully moved it to the center of the table, Sophie let out a reverent breath. 

“Is that…?” 

She stood and leaned over the table to get a better look. Hardison let out an excited giggle. Nate’s eyes widened, but it was at Parker’s next words that he finally knew what he was looking at. 

“The Gutenberg Bible,” Parker said proudly. 

“Oh my God,” Nate murmured. 

“The first book ever printed using a printing press. Printed in Latin, illuminated, rubricated, and bound by hand. Less than a hundred and eighty copies printed,” Parker said, reciting the information from the placard near the Bible’s display in the Huntington Library. “Only eleven copies printed on vellum survive, including this one.” 

“And only six vellum copies are complete, like this one,” Eliot added, Parker’s excitement and pride spilling over into him. 

“There’s technically two volumes,” Parker said, her mood suddenly dropping a little in her disappointment. “We could only get one.” 

“Yeah, but we’re going back once the hype dies down to get the other one,” Hardison explained, nearly quivering with excitement. 

Sophie shook her head in amazement. “I’ve never seen one this close. I mean, I’ve sold individual pages and sections, but… wow…” She reached out a hand as if to trail her fingers along the spine, but stopped herself. 

Even Nate looked impressed. He gingerly opened the cover and leafed through a few pages, peering close at the ornate text. 

All at once he seemed to shut down. He carefully closed the book and stepped back from the table. He cleared his throat. 

“Parker, we have a job to plan,” he said sternly. “Put that away, and you probably shouldn’t bring it back here.” 

Parker pouted and started wrapping the Bible back up. Eliot frowned at Nate, who staunchly avoided any of the glares he was getting. 

“Okay,” Nate said when Parker finished. “So Eliot is moving Perry. Hardison, where are you with that transfer?” 

Eliot sighed in frustration. 

Someday they’d make Nate accept that he was already a criminal. For now, though, pretending to be an honest man was enough for him, even if it annoyed the others. 

“Right now we have the leverage we need to get Lockwood his house back,” Nate was saying, and Parker laughed. Nate’s brow furrowed. 

Parker pointed at him, her frustration with him all but gone and replaced by amusement. “You said the thing,” she said, referring to their group’s new name, chosen by Hardison a few weeks prior. “Leverage.” 

Nate rolled his eyes as Hardison snickered. 

The group’s focus was gone for a while as Sophie asked to see the book again and asked what they planned to do with it, Parker chattered back about prices and storage ideas, Hardison got up to get a soda, and Eliot leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and smirked at Nate. 

_ Your move, white knight, _ he wanted to say. 

Nate just huffed agitatedly and pulled out a chair to sit and ride out everyone else’s inattention. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings in this chapter for: mention of explosions, mention of burn injuries, explicit descriptions of sensory overload and meltdowns, brief mention of natural disasters, discussion of close quarters that may trigger claustrophobia, mention of child death and death of parental figures, mention of self-injurious behavior, animal (kaiju) death, discussion of characters being watched while they sleep (by a friend) that may trigger paranoia, mention of death of parental figures, violent impulses directed into property damage, mention of minor hand injuries

“Aw, come on, why does Parker get to lead jobs and I don’t?” Hardison asked, looking deeply offended and making enraged gestures at Nate, who was calmly ignoring his tone and shuffling a stack of papers at the far end of the conference table. 

“Because Parker is a legal adult and has never gotten us blown up during one of her leads,” Nate replied. He paused, pursed his lips, and looked at Parker, huddled in the corner under a blanket and loudly eating something crunchy. “You  _ are  _ a legal adult, right, Parker?” 

A hand appeared in the folds of the blanket and gave Nate a thumbs up, then disappeared again, followed by more crunching. 

Nate raised an eyebrow at Eliot. 

“Bad sensory day,” Eliot explained, at the same time Hardison indignantly exclaimed, “we didn’t get  _ blown up!” _

“This burn scar on my leg says otherwise,” Nate retorted mildly. 

“Oh, leave him alone, it was an accident,” Sophie said tiredly, coming into the conference room from her office and leaning on the doorframe. 

Nate sighed but didn’t respond. 

“What are we going to do about dinner?” she asked. 

“I could make somethin’,” Eliot offered. He was getting restless--Parker’s overstimulation was spreading to him, and the air vent above his head wasn’t doing him any favors. 

“I could go pick up some takeout,” Hardison said, “and then when I get back tell y’all about my plan for this job,” he finished, a strange mixture of indignation and schmoozing. 

“No,” Nate and Eliot said in unison. Parker laughed under her blanket and Eliot grinned cheekily at Hardison. 

Hardison huffed. “You’re both the evil twin, you and Parker, you know that?” he mumbled, and started to get up. 

Then they heard it.

It was quiet at first, and the five of them automatically stilled, listening hard. Once Hardison’s chair had stopped rolling on the wooden floor, they could hear it clearer. 

Sirens. Unmistakably. 

Parker pulled the blanket off of her head and looked around in alarm, blinking quickly in the light. Eliot’s heart started pounding in his chest as he looked towards Nate. 

“Probably just a siren test,” Sophie said shakily, not sounding convinced. 

Nate looked at his watch, his hand trembling. “It’s not Wednesday at noon,” he said quietly. 

“M-maybe it’s a tornado siren? Or hurricane?” Hardison stuttered, clutching his hoodie he’d pulled off the back of his chair tight in both hands. 

“That’s a kaiju alert,” Nate said softly. 

Eliot swallowed hard, Parker’s fear compounding with his own. He felt her shakily get to her feet behind him and he stood as well, carefully pushing in his chair as he waited for Nate to call the shots. 

“Okay, everyone, listen up,” Nate said quietly, but needlessly. They were all watching him already. “That siren means there’s a kaiju headed this way. Now, it may not come to Los Angeles, it might go to another city, but we need to take shelter nevertheless. We should have  _ some  _ time, but we should leave within five minutes.” 

Eliot felt Parker’s cold hand find its way into his and he held on tight. 

“Everyone needs their passports. Eliot, get two bottles of water for each of us and a package of something like granola bars,” Nate instructed. “Parker, the first aid kits and gas masks. Hardison, do what you need to do to secure the offices. Sophie, are you still in contact with Starke?” 

“Yes,” Sophie said breathlessly. 

“Call him. Have him set up somewhere for us to go after the attack and transport there. Somewhere out of the city but not far.” 

He looked around to each of them. “Speed is of the utmost importance. Does everyone understand?” 

They all nodded. 

“I’m going downstairs to direct traffic to the bunker. Get everything ready and go down,” Nate said, still speaking quietly and evenly. A calm had settled over him and Eliot saw why he had risen through the ranks in the Navy so quickly. “Go on.” 

Eliot squeezed Parker’s hand, locked eyes with her, and let go. Immediately she set off to the bathrooms down the hall and Eliot went in the other direction, towards the little kitchen. He heard Sophie speaking quietly to someone who turned out to be Nate a moment later when he responded equally as softly. He heard the front door open and close, and the heels on Sophie’s boots clicking as she paced around the conference room. 

Eliot pulled open the cabinet where they kept the bottled water and counted out ten bottles, then added a couple extra just in case. He swiftly found the snacks and grabbed a box of granola bars and a box of crackers. He eyed the pile of food and water on the counter and went off in search of a bag to put it all in. In his office/bedroom he shoved his fake passport, phone, wallet, and a couple of flashlights in his backpack. On a whim he also grabbed his work gloves and the small toolkit he took with him on raids when they infrequently made them nowadays. He all but ran back to the kitchen and added the water and food to his bag, then shouldered it. It was heavy, but not painfully so. 

As he headed towards the front door Parker appeared in the hallway ahead of him, her own backpack full. She tossed Eliot’s jacket towards him and then tied her own around her waist. 

“Hardison,” Eliot called. 

“Almost ready,” Hardison replied from the conference room. 

“Keep workin’,” Eliot told him, going back to stand in the doorway. “Where’s your phone and passport?” 

“Got my phone. Passport’s in my room, top desk drawer, but it’s locked,” Hardison answered, furiously typing, not looking up from his laptop. 

Parker slipped past Eliot, digging in her pocket wordlessly as she went through the arch on the other side of the room towards the rooms variously used as offices and bedrooms. 

Sophie passed Parker and came into the conference room, having changed into shoes more suited to difficult terrain as she made her call, and waited for the rest of them. In less than a minute Parker was back and handed a passport to Hardison, who took it, eyes still on his computer and typing with one hand. A moment later he clicked two more keys and hurriedly shut the laptop lid. 

“Okay, let’s go,” he said. 

Sophie led the way out of the offices, instinctively locking the door behind them. Parker wordlessly offered her backpack to Hardison and he shoved his laptop inside, the whole exchange barely slowing them down as the four of them joined the throng of people dashing down the building’s stairs. 

The office took up most of the sixth floor of the building, with only one small accounting office sharing the floor, and Sophie absentmindedly asked after the accountant and her family when she fell in step beside her. 

At the ground floor they saw Nate through the glass doors at the far side of the lobby, standing in the street and directing people towards the kaiju shelter a block down the street. When they caught up to him he grasped Sophie’s elbow, kissed her quickly, and pointed down the street. 

“You should go,” he said, shouting a little to be heard over the panic around him. He leaned in close to Sophie and dropped his voice so it wouldn’t carry beyond their small group. “I don’t know how much more room is in the shelter, you need to hurry.” 

“You’re coming with us,” Sophie said firmly, and grabbed onto his sleeve and hustled him with her as she walked towards the shelter. He pulled himself free and she grabbed around his arm instead. 

The streets were chaotic, about a hundred people streaming down the street, anxiously shouting to each other over the noise. Eliot’s overstimulation was now indistinguishable from Parker’s, and he fought to keep moving. Parker had both hands pressed to her ears and her eyes were wide with panic, and Eliot walked at her elbow, one hand on her backpack urging her forward. He felt a tug on his own backpack and guessed it was Hardison holding on to keep from being pulled away in the crowd but he couldn’t look back to make sure. 

The bunkers in the city were only a couple years old, built after the third attack when the world was starting to realize that the attacks weren’t going to stop and guessed that the coastal cities on the Pacific Rim were the kaiju’s targets. LA had built one of the first, and then several more around the city after the first LA attack. 

No one ever suspected they would be attacked twice in a row, just months apart. 

Just before they reached the door of the shelter they heard a huge impact and felt it shake the ground. Several people screamed and there was a momentary panic as the entrance of the shelter bottlenecked, but somehow Eliot, Parker, and Hardison made it inside and down the stairs, with Sophie leading the way and Nate in tow. 

There was another impact. Even underground they could feel it reverberating through the reinforced concrete surrounding them. 

They shoved their way to one of the far corners and Parker dropped to the floor, pulling her knees to her chest, hands still pressed tight over her ears, tears in her eyes. Eliot gave in to the urge to cover his own ears after he sat next to Parker. She leaned into him, shaking, and he absolutely hated how he could still hear the anxious voices of everyone around him through his palms. They only muffled the sound and added the noise of his own heartbeat, and he tried hard to concentrate on the rhythm. Hardison sat next to Eliot and clutched at his knee tight, looking absolutely terrified. 

Another impact, followed by a muffled roar, and Hardison shrank closer to Eliot. 

This was the first attack Eliot and Parker had ever experienced firsthand. They’d always flown or driven into cities after the fact. Sophie, too. Nate had fought the kaiju firsthand, from tanks and battleships and whatever. 

But Nate’s son had died after the first kaiju attack, the damage done to his system with the loss of power to the machines keeping him alive proving too much to bear. 

And Hardison had effectively been orphaned in the attack. His foster parents at the time had been killed along with one of his foster brothers. 

Eliot carefully removed one hand from his ear and slung his arm around Hardison, pulling him close and then contorting himself to press his hand back to his ear. It was uncomfortable and he knew he was squishing Hardison’s head a little, but he couldn’t bring himself to care when the next impact echoed through the room. 

Nate and Sophie stood in front of them, holding hands with white-knuckled fingers and keeping the crowds from stepping on their younger colleagues on the floor in the corner. 

Eliot distantly heard a klaxon sounding, and he pressed his hands tighter to his head. The klaxon kept going for half a minute, drowned out by impacts every ten seconds or so, and then there was a different sort of impact, of heavy blocks of metal against concrete and then the klaxon quieted. 

They’d closed the shelter doors. 

They waited what felt like forever, listening to the distant sounds of massive footsteps and huge roars through their hands. After several minutes of stomping there was a second set of footsteps, lighter this time but only barely, and quicker, and what sounded almost like a ship’s foghorn a couple of times. 

Parker was a wreck. She had been in bad shape before the attack, but the jostling and sirens and klaxons and pounding had absolutely ruined her. Eliot didn’t need to look at or speak to her to know that her mind was scrambled and she wanted to claw at her own skin to rid herself of the pain all of this input was inflicting on her. He wasn’t far behind. 

The pounding outside the bunker grew quieter and it seemed like the combatants were moving farther away, and gradually things started to calm in the bunker. The hundreds of people shoved into a space the size of a high school gymnasium quieted, took a deep breath, sat on the floor, hugged each other. 

Then, off in the distance, they heard footsteps coming back. At least two sets. Before a minute had passed the footsteps sounded like they were directly overhead and not going anywhere. The pounding was so loud it was physically painful, not helped by the screams from around the bunker every time the concrete underfoot shook. 

Parker was now shrieking almost nonstop to drown out the noise, only pausing long enough to fill her lungs with air, her hands squeezed tight over her ears and her eyes scrunched up tight and tears still finding their way out. Eliot felt his own eyes watering and he had never, ever been so terrified. 

He had automatically closed his eyes, but he opened them when he felt some movement in front of him, and he saw Nate crouching down in front of him and Parker. 

_ Don’t, _ he wanted to say to Nate, but he couldn’t make himself speak, not that he would have been heard.

He thought he knew what was going to happen as he saw Nate reach out to place a hand on Parker’s leg, but a moment later something truly unexplainable and unexpected happened. 

He  _ felt _ Nate touch Parker’s knee, like it was his own, and at the same time it was like his consciousness split in two. With his own eyes he could see Nate crouching there, the angle of view everything it should’ve been from where he was sitting, but he also saw darkness and swirling shapes and felt electricity up and down his spine and then another set of eyelids opened and saw Nate right in front of him, watching them with concern in his eyes. The pounding overhead doubled in volume as he heard it with two sets of ears and the ground shook him twice as hard felt through two bodies, and Nate’s hand on his knee was red-hot and the screaming coming out of his mouth--Parker’s mouth?--strained at his throat and vibrated through his jaw and through his hands and everything was too much, everything was too loud and too painful and Eliot was going to die. A fraction of a second later he saw Parker’s hand move from her ear, and in his other consciousness he  _ felt _ the hand leave her ear, and the noise around him cranked up in volume, and as he felt the hand smack hard on Nate’s shoulder to shove him back he also saw it happening from where he sat and like it was happening with his own hand. 

Then the hand clapped back to Parker’s ear with a loud  _ pop _ as Nate toppled onto his ass, and Eliot winced at the sound and so did his other consciousness. 

Eliot marveled at what was happening… or maybe it was Parker thinking it. It was impossible to distinguish which thoughts were his and which were hers. 

But as soon as they acknowledged the connection, it was gone. The only eyes Eliot could see through were his own, and the added sensory input from Parker’s point of view was suddenly gone and it was like a gust of cool air blowing away half of his tension. He let out a sharp breath, disoriented, and looked, alarmed, at Parker, who was already staring at him, her hands a little looser over her ears. She had stopped shrieking, and her mouth hung open. 

They stared at each other, not paying attention to Nate grumpily getting back to his feet nearby. 

And then a particularly loud stomp directly overhead shook the bunker so hard Eliot actually felt himself leave the floor for a fraction of a second and the spell was broken. Parker squeezed her eyes closed and curled tighter in on herself and Eliot winced as the sound echoed over and over around the room. 

What the  _ fuck _ had just happened? 

He didn’t have time to dwell on it, because he had a growing conviction that they were all going to die from the fight above their heads and he especially was going to die because the noise was like knives through his back and his frontal lobe. And then a moment later even that was driven from his mind by a huge roar that lasted nearly ten seconds, followed by a massive, earth-shaking thud. Nearly everyone in the bunker screamed and many toppled over. 

And then everything went silent. 

As the people who had fallen or sat down during the attack got to their feet, everyone looked up at the ceiling, seemingly trying to see through the several-foot-thick layer of concrete and rebar to the ground above with bated breath. 

After half a minute there were more footsteps overhead, two sets, quick and even, growing quieter and quieter as they got farther away. Another long minute of silence and stillness stretched on, as though the bunker had been paused with a tv remote. Eliot slowly took his hands off of his ears, still overstimulated all to hell but needing to listen hard to confirm what he suspected: the kaiju was dead. He couldn’t hear anything except Parker’s faint whimpering next to him and a faint tapping as Hardison nervously patted a rhythm on the concrete floor to his other side. 

Then someone started clapping. 

The applause spread through the bunker like wildfire, people cheering and laughing and crying, just glad to be alive. 

When everything quieted again someone shouted that they were a doctor if anyone was hurt, echoed by someone else who was apparently also a doctor, and then a couple more. People began moving around and talking, seeking out the doctors and finding people they knew, neighbors and friends and family, to check that everyone was okay. 

Eliot didn’t know much of anyone in the city apart from his crew and a handful of clients, but even so, half a dozen people making the rounds stopped to ask after each of them, answered politely by Sophie, who had sat heavily on the floor next to Hardison, exhausted. Hardison slowly unfroze, wiping away stray tears embarrassedly, and Eliot held out a hand. Hardison took it and Eliot squeezed firmly, unable to make eye contact to check Hardison’s face, and then let go. Nate, after checking on his team, walked away towards one of the doctors, and through the legs of the people standing around them Eliot could see him speak to her, and then walk towards another doctor. 

Parker was still shaking next to Eliot, too tightly wound to even stim properly, and in the remnants of whatever weird connection she’d had with Eliot he could tell that she was barely even registering that the attack was over. She still held her hands tight over her ears and squeezed her eyes closed, and her knees were drawn up to her chest. 

Eliot grabbed her bag from where it had fallen, forgotten, in front of her when she had pulled it off her back, and quickly dug through it, looking for any of Parker’s stim toys. He found a stress ball squished under the first aid kit, and he nudged Parker until she opened her eyes. He held out the ball and she shook her head once, then closed her eyes again. 

Eliot shoved aside the bag and nudged Parker again, then held out his arms when she opened her eyes. She leaned in and he wrapped his arms around her shoulders tight. He could feel her shaking, and he squeezed tighter. She sighed softly and slowly began to calm down, though she was still whimpering almost imperceptibly with every exhale. 

Sophie was watching them, but Eliot paid her no attention, instead trying to keep his mind calm by going through lists in his head, in case Parker could sense how he was feeling the same way he could with her sometimes. Lists of cities they’d lived in, lists of dog breeds he liked, lists of people they’d helped, lists of his favorite bands… 

It was nearly an hour after silence fell outside that the klaxons started going off. Parker had relaxed considerably and even taken her hands off of her ears, but when the massive doors started creaking open she clapped them back over her ears. Eliot tightened his arms around her, wincing at the sound himself. 

The other people in the bunker started getting to their feet and gathering their things, and when the klaxons ended and the doors thudded to a stop in their housings everyone began pushing towards the door. 

Eliot, Parker, Hardison, and Sophie were in the corner opposite the door, so they gained a lot of space in very little time. Nate pushed through the crowd back towards his group, having taken point among the self-proclaimed leaders in the bunker. In the past hour he’d made announcements, used the telephone near the entrance to report to the KRT crews calling each bunker, helped each doctor find the cache of emergency supplies stashed in the bunker, and held a small meeting with the other people who were taking charge. Now that the doors were opening, though, his job was done, and he found his way back towards his crew. 

He eyed Parker, scrunched into a ball and being held together by Eliot, and rubbed absentmindedly at his shoulder where she’d shoved him earlier. 

“We’re cleared to go,” Nate said, and Sophie got to her feet with his help, followed by Hardison on shaky legs. 

Eliot nodded at him and began the slow job of getting Parker ready to move. Not moving his arms around her, he tapped her arm until she gave him her attention, and he jerked his head towards the door. Parker scrunched up her face as she stared at the backs of everyone shoving through the doors at the far end, and then sighed heavily. She nodded slowly and Eliot withdrew his arms and stood, holding out his hands to help her up. 

She stood without help, though, and immediately started swaying back and forth, looking pained. Eliot shouldered his bag and helped Parker into hers, and she seemed to calm a little once the heavy pack was on her back. 

“Okay?” Nate asked warily, and Eliot just wordlessly pointed to the door. Words weren’t gonna happen for a while, for either him or Parker. Nate squinted at him and Eliot shifted uncomfortably, his hands clasping and unclasping at his sides, and then Nate gave up and turned to go. 

They were the last ones out of the bunker, and when they emerged onto the street above they were surprised to see that night had fallen while they were underground. The air smelled of smoke and diesel and some kind of putrid, rotten smell that Eliot didn’t recognize. Several of the buildings had been toppled, and the power was out in all of them, and a thin stream of water flowed down the side of the slanted street, evidently coming from a burst pipe up the street. 

Emergency crews were directing everyone uphill, and when the crew had walked about a block they came to their own building. The south wall had a huge hole in it which had collapsed inward, and looked like a giant tail had slammed into the brick. At the topmost part of the hole they could see directly into their little kitchen, and something was sparking every few seconds. 

“Guess we’ll need that place to stay outside the city after all,” Nate said to Sophie. 

“I told Starke where we were sheltering, he should be able to find us,” Sophie replied. 

At the top of the hill there was a very hastily assembled outpost of sorts set up. A handful of emergency vehicles were parked in a loose circle in a big intersection, and military personnel and medical crews were still setting things up. A handful of military personnel were directing people further up the street to an intact community center where FEMA would be setting up a camp when they got there. 

Eliot turned and looked back down at the city, being able to see more than before since they were higher up. The air was hazy with smoke and a fair portion of the city was dark, but not even a quarter mile away there was a huge dark shape, lumpy and soft-looking, not hard right angles like buildings, slumped over and stretching out a full two city blocks, from what he could see, and he realized it was the kaiju. He blinked, a little awe-stricken, and would have stared longer if Nate, heading up the back of the group, hadn’t nudged him as he passed. 

As the Leverage crew approached the circle of emergency vehicles a figure sauntered away from the group. Eliot couldn’t immediately place him, but the gait was nagging at his mind. 

When they got closer and the flood lamps lit up his face, Eliot recognized him. 

“Hello, Nate,” Sterling said, smirking. 

Nate sighed. “Sterling,” he replied, aging ten years in an instant. 

“I thought that was your voice on the emergency phone,” Sterling mused. He looked around at the others. “Miss Devereaux,” he said with a little nod. “Spencer. Parker.” He paused when he got to Hardison. “I don’t believe we’ve met.” 

Hardison froze under Sterling’s catlike gaze, but Nate spoke for him. 

“Good. If you’ll excuse us,” Nate said, and attempted to sidestep Sterling. 

“I got your job,” Sterling said, sounding smug as all hell and stepping back in front of Nate. Nate tensed and just stepped back the other way. “I heard you were working with criminals now but I had no idea it was  _ these _ criminals. That’s very interesting.” 

A second person in military uniform detached from the group across the way and came jogging over. He saluted Sterling quickly. 

“Yes?” Sterling asked him, sounding irritated at being interrupted. 

The soldier turned to Sophie. “Miss Devereaux, there’s a helo waiting for you and your colleagues.” 

Nate grinned smugly at Sterling. “If you don’t mind,” he said vaguely, pushing past Sterling. The soldier hesitated for a moment and then led the way across the circle of emergency vehicles, leaving Sterling standing alone in the street. Eliot couldn’t help but smile as they walked away from him. 

A half-hour helicopter ride later (Hardison holding tight onto Sophie the whole time and Parker almost refusing to take the headset off when they landed) they found themselves at a posh resort that for some reason had a helo pad. 

Starke, the man who had taken over Sophie’s distribution network when she walked away, met them in the lobby. Eliot, Parker, and Hardison were dead on their feet, and Nate and Sophie weren’t far behind. 

“Sophie,” Starke said with a soft smile as they trudged into the large, inviting room. 

“Marcus,” Sophie greeted, warmly, if tiredly. 

Starke gave her a loose hug and kissed her cheek and then gestured to a wide hallway to the left of the front desks. “You’ve already been checked in. I got two suites for the five of you, but I’ve been assured they’re very spacious.” 

Sophie smiled brightly. “Thank you so much for this.” 

Starke seemed to blush. “It’s no problem. Anything for an old friend.” 

Nate stepped forward and shook Starke’s hand, and Eliot began zoning out, leaning his elbows on the back of a plush armchair. The hum of voices continued for what could have been seconds or hours, and he was only roused by Hardison nudging him. He blinked and looked up to see Sophie, Nate, and Starke walking off without them, Hardison in front of the chair he was leaning on, and Parker swaying side to side next to him. A hotel employee stood nearby, nervously waiting. 

Eliot straightened up and made to follow the others, but Hardison caught his arm. 

“They’re getting dinner. Nate said for us to go up to our room and get room service if we want,” Hardison said. 

Eliot nodded and shrugged off Hardison’s hand. 

“This way, please,” the employee said with a shy smile. 

Their suite was huge, with a bedroom with two double beds and a separate living room with a sofa bed. Both rooms had fireplaces. Eliot dropped his backpack just inside the door and trudged into the bedroom, toed off his shoes, and fell face-first on the closest bed. The mattress was soft and the linens smelled nice, and he almost fell asleep right then and there, but his stomach growled loudly after half a minute. 

He groaned as he got back to his feet, every part of him aching, and trudged back to the living room. He found Parker huddled with her back against the wall and her knees drawn up to her chest just inside the door, and Hardison tapping at a tablet at the desk, the latter of whom beckoned Eliot over. 

“Room service menu. Don’t even have to make a phone call,” Hardison said, swiping at the tablet and then scooting his chair over so Eliot could reach it. 

Eliot clicked through for a few minutes and selected a burger for himself, grimacing at the prices, and spaghetti for Parker. After adding drinks for both of them and a couple of cookies, he turned the tablet back over to Hardison and went over to Parker. 

He nudged her with his foot and when she looked up at him, wincing as the angle put the light in her eyes, he gestured towards the bedroom and then walked off. Again he fell across the bed and closed his eyes, and half a minute later he heard a  _ whump _ as Parker, he guessed, collapsed on the other double bed. 

Eliot lay there, intending on sleeping until their food showed up, but sleep wouldn’t come. He fidgeted for a few minutes, shifting his weight around and adjusting his pillows without opening his eyes. 

He firmly avoided thinking about the day’s events. That could wait until tomorrow. 

He heard soft footsteps and then Hardison exclaimed indignantly. “I’m not gonna sleep on the sofa bed again!” he protested. 

Eliot couldn’t help the little smirk that crossed his face, and Parker laughed into a pillow from somewhere to his right. 

“Evil twins,” Hardison muttered.

 

* * *

 

Eliot didn’t know how long he’d been asleep when he woke up. It was still dark outside, and Parker was sleeping soundly in the next bed, her mind calm, if a little ragged around the edges. The only light still on was the closet light, the door half open, and it did little to illuminate the bedroom. A beam of light managed to spill through the open door into the living room, and Eliot sat up, blinking quickly, trying to figure out what had woken him up. 

After wolfing down his burger earlier he’d grudgingly helped Hardison set up the sofa bed, washed his face, and collapsed back in bed. He’d probably been the first one asleep, given how much he’d heard Parker tossing and turning and readjusting and sighing and whimpering faintly, and how he’d heard the tv in the living room playing the news as he quickly wound down. 

Eliot was just about to lay back down when he heard movement coming from the entryway, though he could still hear Hardison snoring faintly. He froze, listening hard, and heard soft footsteps. 

Eliot was about to spring up out of bed to defend their home base, but as he was trying to make his limbs move, he heard Hardison hum a sleepy question in the other room. 

“Just me,” the intruder murmured. “Go back to sleep.” 

It was Nate. 

Eliot calmed instantly, shifting quietly back to lay down. He listened, settling into his blankets again, as Nate dragged a chair quietly across the carpet in the living room and sat in it with a quiet sigh. 

Nate didn’t move for a while, and Eliot drifted off a little. He woke up again as he heard Nate silently walk into the bedroom and sit on the edge of Parker’s bed. Eliot watched in the dim light of the closet, wondering what Nate was up to. He wasn’t concerned about Nate seeing him; the light didn’t illuminate his own bed at all, he’d made sure of it. In time his eyes adjusted even more to the darkness and Eliot could see Parker’s face, open and peaceful in her sleep. 

Nate just sat with his hands folded in his lap, breathing even, occasionally looking over at Parker. After a few minutes Parker’s face scrunched up and she stirred, her hands coming up as if to shield herself from something or maybe to block a bright light from her eyes, and she whimpered softly. 

Nate turned towards her on the edge of the bed and reached out, softly stroking Parker's wrist with the back of his fingers. 

“Shh,” he whispered. “It’s alright, I got you.” 

Parker’s brow furrowed. 

“You’re safe,” Nate whispered. 

Parker’s brow smoothed out and her hands dropped to the mattress beside her and she snuggled her face into her pillow. 

Nate smiled softly and put his hands back in his lap. 

Eliot’s eyes grew heavy again. His bed was the perfect softness and the linens didn’t smell too strongly of detergent, the duvet was nice and heavy, the sound of the air conditioner was soothing and the vent pointed well away from his bed. The perfect sensory environment to recover in. 

He didn’t quite fall asleep, because he didn’t actually wake up when he heard Nate whispering again, he just kind of started paying attention again. 

"I'm lost." Nate let out a soft sigh. “What am I going to do, Father?” he whispered, almost too quiet for Eliot to hear. 

Eliot lay there, listening and nearly drifting off again, for a while. 

It could have been anywhere from a couple minutes to half an hour later, but after staying still for some time, Nate sighed and turned to Parker again. He smoothed a hand over her hair, bent, kissed her forehead, and stood carefully. 

Eliot closed his eyes as Nate walked around to the other side of his bed. Nate brushed his fingers against Eliot’s head just above his ear, bent, and kissed Eliot’s temple softly, then stood and moved out of the room. Eliot heard a chair being moved back to the table. Half a minute later the door opened, light from the hallway spilling into the living room, and closed softly, and Nate was gone. 

Eliot was too tired, too mentally wrung-out, to think about Nate’s visit, so he just closed his eyes and let himself fall back asleep. 

When he woke up in the morning, he wasn’t entirely convinced it had happened.

 

* * *

 

In the  end it took two full days of hiding in their suite, sleeping, watching movies, taking long showers, and ordering room service for Eliot and Parker to get back to normal. Parker reckoned the day Yamarashi hit was the worst sensory overload she’d had since she was a kid. Eliot’s hadn’t been his worst ever, but it was pretty far up there on the list of horribly bad sensory experiences, behind the day his parents had made him go to the state fair during peak attendance while a popular band played far too loud, and the day in elementary school they’d made recycled paper. Just thinking about the horrible texture of the pulp they’d used could put him in a bad mood. 

They hadn’t left Los Angeles with any clothes except the ones on their backs, so the day after they arrived at the resort, (which was actually massive and had, like, six restaurants and five pools and ten shops) Sophie managed to coax the three of them out of their suite for a little while, long enough to go into town, buy a few days’ worth of clothes, toiletries, and snacks, and eat lunch with Sophie and Nate. Starke had left early that morning, and Nate was distracted, his whole focus being on the kaiju attack and the taskforce who had set up camp a block away from their headquarters. 

Eliot and Parker were still shaky, and the short trip into town was exhausting and nearly overwhelmed Parker. She was still nonverbal, and Eliot could only manage short sentences and hand signals, and by the time they finished their too-fancy meals at one of the resort’s restaurants Eliot couldn’t talk either. 

As soon as Parker put down her fork they both stood, gathered their purchases, and pointed wordlessly in the vague direction of the bank of elevators. Sophie sighed and told them to “let me know if I can do anything” and let them go. Hardison stayed, talking about going swimming or checking out the business center setup, and Eliot and Parker practically ran to their room, closed the curtains, put on the tv at a low volume, and huddled under the blankets in bed to recover. 

On the third day after the attack, Eliot, Parker, and Nate went back to Los Angeles. Parker and Eliot were recovered, still a little jumpy but verbal and able to function again. Nate drove a “borrowed” car and flashed fake credentials at each roadblock, and ultimately parked a few blocks from headquarters. He saluted the others loosely and took off towards the Kaiju Response Taskforce base of operations, and Parker and Eliot walked the last couple of blocks to their building to retrieve what they could of their stuff. 

The damage to the building was worse than they’d thought as they passed it after the attack; not only was there a gaping hole in one side, but parts of the stairs were taken out, too, and they had to pull acrobatic feats out of their back pockets to even get up to their offices. 

When they made it to the sixth floor, Eliot took off towards the janitor’s closet at the far end of the hall while Parker dealt with the office’s front door. She was done and standing in the open door by the time he passed back by with the ladder, and she grinned at him, pleased that she hadn’t lost her touch. He carefully lowered the ladder down to the landing below so they could get down again instead of having to jump and toss down their things. 

Hardison was keeping up a steady stream of mumbled commentary as he scanned KRT frequencies and various government email servers from their suite, broadcast to their earbuds using some kind of tech hack Hardison had tried unsuccessfully to explain multiple times, and Eliot and Parker both turned off their comms as they went into the offices. 

Their little sitting area was unharmed, if a little dusty, and Eliot set about gathering the books on his list, starting a pile on the couch they would pack up before they left. Parker moved into the conference room to gather the few physical files they kept. Next was the art and sculptures around the offices, and Eliot shook his head at the Vermeer, the Cezanne, the Picasso sketches, and the Van Gogh, all original, several replaced with forgeries by Starke in their museum exhibitions. 

The kitchen was a lost cause, with half the floor and the refrigerator missing in addition to the far wall, so Eliot and Parker moved on to the other rooms. 

Each of the five of them had a spacious room on the sixth floor. Hardison, Eliot, and Parker used theirs as bedrooms as well as offices, but Nate and Sophie had an apartment elsewhere in the city and thus used their rooms only as offices and lounges. 

In Hardison’s room he gathered up all of the spare hard drives and laptops. He’d been sent with a list of cords Hardison wanted him to grab but he didn’t know what any of them were, so he ended up gathering every single cord he could see and balling them up together. Hardison could sort it out later. 

He heard Parker laugh triumphantly as he was digging through Hardison’s closet for a specific scarf. He followed the sound of her laugh to her room, where he found her hugging a brown paper package to her chest and bouncing up and down. 

“What’s that?” 

“The Bible,” Parker said. “It made it.” 

Eliot gaped. “What the…? You said you put it in storage!” 

She shook her head, glee still radiating off of her. 

“What the  _ fuck,  _ Parker!” 

Parker stuck out her tongue at Eliot, not at all chastised. 

“Just… go put it in with the other stuff,” Eliot said tiredly. “And check the door’s locked while you're in there.” 

Parker  _ hmph _ ed and stomped out of the room, and Eliot shook his head. He headed back to Hardison’s room to finish grabbing the last of the things on the list so he could move on to his own room. 

Just before he turned the corner into Hardison’s room, though, Parker rounded into the hall and stopped short, a stunned look on her face. Her hand flew to her ear and she winced. 

“Slow down,” she snapped, eyes focused on a point past Eliot’s shoulder. “Wait.” 

She waved a hand at Eliot, though she already had his attention, and pointed to her ear. Eliot got the hint and dug around in his pocket for his earbud, then stuffed it in his ear and turned it back on. 

“What?” he asked. 

_ “Y’all, we use earbuds for a reason. Don't just turn them off and make me go through all the backup hoops I got to turn them back on when I gotta tell you somethin’ important, I swear to God, I'm not your mom--” _

“Hardison,” Eliot snapped.  _ “What?”  _

_ “Nate’s quitting.”  _

Eliot felt a jolt and looked up to see Parker staring at him, their weird mental connection firing back up, and  _ hard.  _ It wasn't as pervasive as during the attack, but it was visceral and strong. Eliot could feel Parker’s heart thudding in his chest alongside his own and her suddenly slick palms, see the sharp, neon angles of her panic in his mind’s eye. 

“What?” Parker asked, breathless. 

_ “He's quitting on us,” _ Hardison repeated, slower, and then launched into a rushed explanation. _ “I was scanning KRT frequencies, makin’ sure no one got near our building just in case, and Nate left his earbud here--what is  _ with _ y’all today?--and I tapped into Sterling’s radio. They were talking about the jaeger program. And then Sterling…”  _

Hardison trailed off, sounding like he couldn't breathe for a second. Eliot and Parker just waited, sharing in each other’s fear and fury, unable to speak until they knew what Sterling did. Hardison cleared his throat and tried again. 

_ “Sterling said he's going into the Ranger program. Gonna be a jaeger pilot. An’... an’ he wants Nate to do it with him. They're gonna… they're gonna fight those things.”  _

Parker’s eyes widened even further and her breath rushed out of her lungs. Eliot’s jaw clenched automatically and he felt fire in the pit of his belly. 

“No,” Eliot gritted out. “He's not gonna get himself killed like that.” 

“He doesn't get to make that choice without us,” Parker hissed. 

Eliot balled his hands into fists and felt flames flicker through his core, egged on by Parker’s terror and indignation. He couldn't control it. 

“Fuck!” Eliot shouted, and pivoted quick, sending a fist into the wall next to him. His fist tore through the drywall, leaving a dent in some places and a ragged, powdery hole in the middle. His knuckles protested, sharp pain searing through his hand, and he flexed his fingers slowly when he pulled it free, unable to really react to the pain. 

Nate couldn’t just leave. He couldn’t just walk out, not when they were doing so much good. Not when they were finally a cohesive team. Not when he was finally coming to grips with being a criminal. He couldn’t just go swanning off to die in a fucking giant robot, leaving his team, his  _ family _ behind wondering if he’d be okay. 

The way Parker was nodding at him, her mouth set in a hard line, told Eliot that she’d heard at least some of his internal rant. He got a flash of her own mind, and knew what they had to do. 

“Hardison,” Eliot said, shifting rapidly into a leadership role. “We’re gonna finish up here and head back. When we get there we want everything you have on the Ranger program. Recruitment, training, selection process, everything.” 

Parker nodded again, just once more, her lip curling in a devious smile. 

_ “Why? You gonna try to stop him?”  _ Hardison asked, sounding hopeful. 

“No,” Parker said. “We’re going too. We’re joining the Ranger program.” 

Eliot smirked back at Parker, their plan solidifying in their minds. 

This family would stay together if it fucking killed them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so so much for reading and leaving feedback! my apologies for the inconsistent uploading schedule 
> 
> part 3 of 4 in this series is in the works, so subscribe to the series if you want to be notified when it updates!


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